Under a Dark Blue Sky
by SilverRain4
Summary: Sequel to Love as Black as Sin. Max and Alec are thrown into a world of political intrigue. Completed.
1. Barefoot in the City Park

Wow, two stories finished and I'm still crazy enough to attempt a third.  I'd just like to thank everyone again for supporting the last one.  I'm swamped with school work this term so I apologize in advance if I'm slow to post sometimes on this one.  This story is going to be a bit different than the first two, less supernatural drama, more ass kicking.  Anyhow I hope you enjoy.

* Though not entirely necessary, I highly recommend reading the first two stories in this series "Lost in the Grey," and "Love as Black as Sin."

* Recap of "Love as Black as Sin":  The dark lady returns to wreak havoc against Max and Alec.  The familiars make their bid for world dominance.  Senator Burnhart contacts Max and the transgenics offering Max a deal for her people's freedom, which on the surface seems too good to be true.  Alec and then Max are kidnapped.  Dr. Sandeman finally puts in an appearance explaining the real purpose behind the mysterious runes.  A surprising connection is discovered between Max and the dark woman.  The transgenics realize their purpose in fighting against the familiars ultimate plan.  Biggs meets his tragic and heroic end beating the familiar cause once and for all.  Senator Burnhart follows through on her promise to the transgenics reminding Max and Alec of their promise to act as her guns for hire…

Disclaimer:  I don't own Dark Angel, the show and its characters are the sole possession of Cameron and Eglee.  I do own the plot and the original characters.  I also own an old laptop for writing this stuff, four hundred dollars worth of text books which I should be reading right now, a thirteen inch television which generally occupies my time much better than studying, and a box of chocolate chip cookies.  The text books I might willingly part with but no one touches the cookies. 

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_Rain pelts my slick bare arms, plastering my overlong hair to the nape of my neck, and running in rivulets down my forehead.  Lightening strikes one of the frothing palms outside cracking a branch and sending it crashing to the sands of the shoal.  I shudder involuntarily and duck back inside the rough hewed hut.  Brutal winds threaten to tear the flimsy roof off the small shack which has been my pitiful shelter for the past three days.  The selfish half of my brain, the one which I'd allowed to govern me in those first few months after I'd been freed from Manticore, wished desperately that she was here with me right now.  I crave the comfort of her touch, it's been a long while since I have gone without it.  On the other hand, the rational portion of my brain is happy that she's as far away as she can get from this godforsaken hell hole.  My enhanced vision catches a dimmer flash of light outside.  It can't be lightening again, it's too low to the ground and not nearly bright enough.  A second flash cuts through the driving rain, the long focused beam of a high-powered flashlight.  It's over.  They've found me, and I know that despite the hurricane raging outside, I can't hide indefinitely.  Breathing deeply I plunge into the driving rains outside._

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"Six flights of stairs, you do realize that its six flights of stairs don't you?"  Panting heavily, Sketchy drops the box to the floor and slumps onto it.

"Five flights, you counted the front stoop.  Besides it's not as if either of us cares about the physical exertion."  Stumbling up the stairs behind us, Max flops her larger bundle down beside Sketchy's and punches my shoulder.

"What?  I was talking about the stairs."  At one time she would have thrown a major hissy fit at me for that comment, now she simply throws me a dazzling smile and stands up on her tip toes to drop a small peck on my cheek.  

"So me and the moron here are dying to know, how hell did you and my Boo get the hock to get a swank pad like this?"  Cindy saunters into the room behind the three of us like a supreme goddess.  She of course gets away with carrying only a small bag of groceries and her petite self.

I open my mouth to speak when a sharp blow to the shin nearly causes me to yelp out loud, and only my transgenic self restraint allows me to maintain my composure.  Circling behind our friends, Max widens her already immense doe eyes and makes rapid hacking motions with her hands.  I wrinkle my forehead in reply and with a martyred sigh she glares at me over their heads and strings out a sentence in slow and deliberate Manticore hand signals.  "Don't say a word about the deal."  Cindy and Sketchy are now staring at me in avid confusion and I quickly plaster on my most charming smirk.

"What can I say my friends.  A few months of cat burgling with revved up, lightening reflexes and you can scrape together enough for a living in this rag tag world."  At the back of the room, Max raises her eyebrows at me with a pained expression.  At least Cindy and Sketchy seemed to buy the explanation.  

Max steps forward, her hips swaying deliciously and momentarily riveting my attention.  "The two of you will stay for dinner won't you?"  I can feel the pout spring immediately to my lips.  Seeing the expression on my face, Cindy bursts into a carol of rich laughter.

"Don't worry Hot Boy, me and the fool here wouldn't dream of stepping on yo big romantic plans for this most fine evening.  Come on Funkmaster, time we leave these two love birds on their own."  Cindy winks cheerfully at Max and Sketchy gives me a discrete thumbs up when he thinks she isn't looking.  Smacking Sketchy across the back of his head and making his hair even more disheveled than usual, she grabs him be the tip of his nose and drags him towards the door.  It clicks shut with a delicious kind of finality.  I turn around to speak and find that she's already blurred to my side.  

Sliding her hands through my own she snuggles up to my body and rests her cheek against my chest.  "Alone at last."  Her lush lips turn up in a delectably seductive smile as she runs her hands down the length of my back to rest in the small.

"Well My Lady how may I woo you on this fine evening.  Perhaps a plate of fresh pasta, a carafe of fine pre-pulse wine?"  She glares at me in mock anger and her fingers dig lightly into my still tender ribs.  Then with an evil expression her hands wander lower causing my breath to hitch in my chest.  "Or perhaps just a loaf of bread and thou."  Her lips crash against mine hungrily, infecting me with such force that I'm driven back a few feet.  I counter by sweeping her off her feet and into my arms, our lips never breaking contact.  With a visible effort her she tilts her head from mine and momentarily avoids my questing mouth.

"You know we don't actually have a bed or a mattress or any of those wonderful trappings yet."  Smirking smugly and still cradling her to my body I sweep down on the nearest box and through the wonders of transgenic memory reemerge clutching an old thick blanket of mine.

"Think we can make do?"

"For you, anything."


	2. They Say She Was A Lonely Girl

And so begins chapter two.  This chapter reintroduces a pivotal character from the last story and also introduces two new ones who will play an important role in the coming plot.  I therefore recommend that you not skim the beginning to get to the lovin.  I will also give my everlasting respect and admiration to anyone who can tell me where I borrowed the beginning of the last chapter from (it was originally a play and was later made into a movie several decades ago).  Joy and goodwill to y'all, and please pretty please review to tell me how I'm doing (constructive criticism gladly accepted, please just don't make me cry).

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"Checkmate."  I glare disbelievingly at the fine chessboard sitting on the table in front of me.  Made of aged cedar wood and inlaid with squares of abalone and obsidian it had been handed down to me from my great-grandfather.  Like me, he had been a senator for the great state of Washington.  Unlike my humble self he had been a legislator at the very height of the Unites States' power, back during the 1950's when the war to end all wars had fattened the economy like a lamb to the slaughter and women wore pearls when they vacuumed and prepared their carcinogenic tv dinners.  I turn my baleful glaze on my apparently worthy opponent.  Her own sparklingly blue eyes laugh reproachfully in return.  She is truly her father's daughter.

"Really Mum no need to get tidgy, I won fair and square and you know it."  Her father's daughter indeed, she smiles brilliantly at me and the likeness between them causes an unbearable lump in my throat.  I immediately focus my mind on other matters, long ago I'd learned that fussing over spilled milk is quite a useless pastime.

"Elbows off the table Elizabeth, and really must you slouch so?  I really must wonder Liz, what they are teaching you at that boarding school.  One would think that the British at least could instill manners in such an imp as you."  My own lips tug up slightly at the corners as she archly raises one dark eyebrow and adjusts her chin to what those in our set would call the "proper height".  

"Well now mother, I must protest that St. Catherine's is a first rate institution.  I could quote you Shakespeare or Wordsworth with equal ease, and my derivative calculus is progressing quite satisfactorily, and the Surrey countryside really is lovely at this time of year.  Besides, there's this all boys school just a few miles away and some of the lads there are just…"  I clear my throat ostentatiously and she stops her too pat recitation.  Andrew used to talk like that, blather on just to annoy me, just to get a laugh out of me when I was down.  

A sharp knock at study door kindly cut me off from further introspection.  Flinging herself across the room in that particularly ungainly way that most fifteen year olds possess, Liz yanks the heavy walnut door open and is almost hit in the face by my assistant's raised fist as he maneuvers to knock again.  Eyes bugging out slightly Jonathan quickly drops his hand to his side and attempts a posture of nonchalance.

"Hallo Jonathan!  How are you today old boy?"  Beaming suspiciously Liz grabs up his recently dropped hand and pumps it vigorously.  "Come in, come in won't you and have a spot of tea."  Still holding the poor young man firmly by the hand she drags him forward into the study and dumps him unceremoniously onto the couch.  I wince slightly at her treatment of my grandmother's china as she roughly catches up one of the teacups.  Her sugary smile glazes slightly as she realizes that we'd polished off the tea a good hour ago, and instead thrusts a gooey bun from the salver tray into his immaculate hands.  If possible his pale hazel eyes jump further out of their sockets as he gapes open mouthed at my young progeny.

"Yes, well uhm.  Thank you Miss."  Jonathan's words come out oddly strangled.  "If young Miss would perhaps excuse us I have some rather sensitive information which craves attention from the Senator."  I wince slightly at Jon's pomposity and rather begin to regret having sent Liz off to England to try to mold her into this stodgy, formal behavior.

"Please Liz, go down to the kitchen and ask Maria when dinner shall be ready."  Something about Jonathan's stiffer than usual, and that's really saying something, posture was setting off little alarms in my head.

"But Mum."  Her forehead frumps together making her look rather like a hedgehog but I get the distinct feeling that the news coming is not suitable for young ears.

"Now Elizabeth Rose!"  Glaring balefully at me she stalks to the door and bangs it shut on her way out.  My hand darts out instinctually to catch the black bishop as it teeters from its precarious position at the edge of the table and makes a dive for the floor.

"My apologies Jonathan, teenagers can be so trying can they not.  Now what is it that you had to tell me?"

"It's about Senator Bradley ma'am.  The private detective you hired last summer has at last dug up some interesting information."  A small thud and a hiss of pain directly outside the door cause Jonathan to start and me to roll my eyes.  I mouth my daughters name at him and roll my eyes deprecatorily.  Twitching nervously the thin boy leans towards me.  

"It's just we've finally found a connection Senator Burnhart, between Mr. Bradley and certain criminal elements.  It would appear that he has had contact with Them."

The black bishop shatters as it crashes against the wall.

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The glaring whiteness of the walls is the first thing which strikes me on waking, the cleanliness is notable in a world were dirt and grime cover just about everything.  The second is that my pillow is shaking with violent spasms.  Rolling over carefully I lift my head from Alec's well articulated chest.  His eyes are still closed in sleep but his brow is puckered in an expression of worry and his head jerks lightly as though he's trying to escape from some night terror.  Shifting onto my knees I cup his head in my hands steadying him and lower my lips to his fretted brow.  As though the physical contact has broken some magical spell his eyes snap open and his body stills.

"Bad dreams my love?"  With seeming difficulty he focuses his stormy hazel eyes on my face and takes in a shuddering breath.  "Alec?  Are you in there?  That must have been one hell of a dream."  I feel rather than see his muscles relaxing one by one, and I maneuver my body slightly so that his head is cushioned on my lap.  A slow and tentative smile lights up his features as he takes in my face, as though he takes steadiness from my presence.

"Just a stupid dream.  A mission that I went on years ago for Manticore.  Me and some other soldiers were sent out to one of those rinky dink islands in the Pacific to take out a little band of smugglers that had stolen some sensitive information.  To make a long story short, the small band of smugglers was a little larger than Intel indicated and we took a few losses.  Honestly I can't say what triggered the dream, but I'm sure it's all just stupid."  He grimaces self deprecatingly and shifts his body to a sitting position.

"Are you sure that's all it was?  You seemed awfully upset."  His long arms snake out to wrap around me and he pulls forward until we sit nose to nose.

"Now I really think that you have enough to be worrying about without borrowing trouble."  And with that he kisses me so thoroughly that the dream slips my mind completely.

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It's an hour later, when we're curled together again on the blanket on the floor, that the Alec's cell phone rings out insistently.  The slow torpor of our extracurricular activities slides off of me like a robe and I'm filled with a sense of deep foreboding.  Hands shaking lightly again he picks up the phone and unfolds it.  The conversation is brief and he replies in raspy monosyllables to the person on the other end.  Refolding the small phone his hazel eyes lock on mine.

"It was her, she's expecting us at noon."


	3. A Brief History of Waiting Room Chairs

_A brief history of waiting room chairs:  Long, long ago, long before television (gasp) and flush toilets, though in truth it was well after Adam and Eve, a hideous torture device was invented.  A dread instrument which could be used to cow and vex, an awful contrivance which would someday be loathed by all.  I am referring not to the small sized laser pointer, bane of school teachers and theatre owners world wide (watch you don't poke out an eye), or shrink rapping which is impossible to open without a very sharp pair of scissors, no I am referring of course to that most dreaded of office appliances, the waiting room chair.  This miracle of ancient construction is specifically made so that no matter how you twist, turn, and shimmy you'll wish that you were getting that colon oscopy, or confessing those sins to the police officer right this very moment.  That's right for only $32.95, you too can torture friends, family, and hated acquaintances with lower lumbar problems and badly cricked necks.  Order now and receive a free supersized enema bag._

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My ass hurts like hell.  For once it's not been caused by Max kicking said appendage, but rather by nearly an hour of torture on this iron maiden on which I'd been directed to sit.  Max stretches beside me, lithe as a cat, and extends her body so much that I could swear that I almost here the vertebrae popping.  Eyeing the stiffly superior looking secretary at the desk in front of us she smiles wickedly and begins deliberately to pop each and every one of her fingers.  "Crack."  Index finger.  "Crack." Ring finger.  "Crack."  Pinky.

"Behave yourself kitten."  I pitch my voice low so that only she can here me.  The scent of her so close to me awakens the animal instincts lurking just below the surface and I lean in nearer to her and nip delicately at the edge of her ear.  A shiver runs down her spine and her face flushes softly.  I chuckle at her sudden show of shyness.  A voice clears itself loudly in front of us and we turn with twin expressions of cat-who-ate the canary guiltily to look at the young male secretary who has circled his desk to stand in front of us.  

"Senator Burnhart will see the two of you now."  Refusing to be cowed by the officious little prick I lift Max off her chair with one arm and drop her to her feet and then swagger towards the rather imposing dark wood door that closes Burnhart's office off from the waiting area.  Putting on my most ingratiating smirk I lean against the door and eye him casually.

"Sooooo."  I drawl out the first word because I've suddenly realized that I don't know the man's name.  My enhanced eyes zero in on the papers on his too tidy desk.  "So Johnny, does she just want to see us or will talking actually be involved?  Because honestly this feels more like a sitting and posing day than a working day."

"Now, now, Alec.  You may be extremely pretty, but I unfortunately didn't have the sense to hire you on as a demimonde.  That sadly means that work will be involved in our current arrangement."  Damnit, I'd been so caught up in teasing the tight-ass that I hadn't heard the door beside me creep open.

"Good afternoon Senator."  To my great surprise it was Maxie and not the little piece of bureaucratic twaddle that spoke up to smooth things over.  

"Hello Ms. Guevara, please let me be the first to congratulate you on your spectacular victory over the Familiar forces.  I believe that it isn't exaggerating to say that the whole world owes you quite a debt of gratitude."  Regaining my normally unflappable sense of center I reapply the patented smirk.

"But not so grateful as to let us off these errands I suppose?"  Quite irritatingly the Senator's smirk is if anything more gloating than my own.

"I must remind you that a deal is a deal, particularly in the world of politics.  Besides, you might find yourselves actually enjoying these little projects.  I think you'll find that they provide the right amount of mental and tactile stimulation.  Now if you don't mind Mr. Alec, Ms. Guevara, I'd deeply appreciate the two of you stepping into my office."

The place reminds me inimitably of Logan and his super posh bachelor pad.  I suppose that the subtle but obviously expensive décor could be considered a sign of breeding.  Secretly, I'm torn between sniffing in contempt over all of the refinement, and mentally calculating how much I could take in by fencing some of this stuff.  Probably enough to keep me in scotch and hair gel for a few years.  

As if sensing my evil thoughts, Max smacks me on the arm and half shoves me into another goddamn chair.  At least this one has some kind of padding on it.  After the small shuffle of rear ends settling on seating and women readjusting clothing, okay I admit to some manly readjusting of my own but do you have any idea how uncomfortable those damn chairs are?  Anyhow, after the shuffling died down, Senator Burnhart leaned lightly on the desk and fixed us with her most politically earnest expression of concern.

"I'm sure that it's no secret to the two of you that many of my fellow politicians have, in the years since the pulse become somewhat corrupt.  In a society where toilet paper is often a precious commodity one can hardly blame some of them.  However, a few recent transgressions by one of my colleagues in particular, have come to my attention.  Unlike the usual petty embezzlement and fraud, this issue could have a very serious impact on the health of the country at large."

"He started up a mayonnaise worshipping cult?  Ouch!"  Max elbowed me sharply in the ribs and motioned for the senator to continue.

"Actually, for once Alec isn't that far off.  About fifteen years ago, when I was just a junior aid to the undersecretary of the Whitehouse, some of the upper echelons of power were rocked by some rather bizarre cult killings.  We probably wouldn't have ever heard of it, but the secretary of states daughter, with whom he'd been estranged years before, was one of the victims.  Feeling horribly guilty for abandoning his child in her time of need, he launched an all out search for the leaders of the cult pooling all of the resources of the FBI and CIA.  A, a friend of mine in the FBI special crimes division was involved in the search and he kept me up to date on the affair.  The folks running the inquiry determined that the murders were the work of some little religious cult out in the South Pacific, which had decided to pick up stakes and try their luck up north in the states.  A special team of commands were sent to round up the cultists, and as they say, that should have been that."

"Gee, why am I guessing that the story doesn't end there?"  I brace myself for another elbow to the ribs but Max is too wrapped up in the story to dole out punishments.

"Yes, quite right.  The military team was sent to Texas, our research showed that that was where they'd set up camp, but the team never returned.  A second team was sent in to try to find signs of the first men, but they found neither traces of their own men nor the cultists.  After that debacle I thought I'd heard the last of the issue.  That was until five years later when a second round of murders occurred.  The cult members managed to hide themselves well after the second incident."  I barely noticed but her voice hitched softly as she spoke the next words.

"One team of military specialists did track them down.  They'd apparently had some kind of smuggling trade in religious artifacts going by that point.  They were never apprehended though and our team unfortunately did not leave very good information behind.  The team was found three weeks later.  A set of ancient African symbols carved into their chests and faces."  She hands both of us a dossier with typed sheets and photos.  My heart plummets to my stomach as I glance down at the first page.


	4. Satin Threads

Bonjour ma Amies.  Are people still reading this stuff?  Hallooooo?  Nah just kidding I'd really like to thank all of you very faithful reviewers, you're just about the best friend a girl could have.  Okay MM this is for you, the play is originally by the great Neil Simon, the movie was made in 1967 and starred Charles Boyer and Jane Fonda as a young, and in love couple just married, and living in a tiny apartment.  Other clues will be forthcoming if you don't get it this time, good luck obi wan, if you guess it and this goes for anyone else too (guesses can be left in reviews or e-mailed to me if you don't want anyone to see them), you will get to vote in the little poll I'm planning for the end of the story.  This next chapter is pure fluff for those of you who have been craving it.  Enjoy because in the next chapter, which is finished so the more you review the quicker it get posted, the real action begins.   Peace my amigos and enjoy.

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I smooth the black silk satin of the evening dress down over my hips. The gown is simple in design, a loose, fold over neck line with an empire waist, and a subtle pattern of embroidered and beaded roses at the neck and hemline. Rarely do I have an opportunity to wear something so overtly feminine and I'm determine to enjoy the experience, even if it will be work related. 

Our very first assignment for Senator Pitbull is a little reconnaissance on this Bradley guy. We'd left her lair clutching two tickets to a black tie ball at the city's premier hotel. She'd also given us a generous allowance, because in her words, she was sure "you certainly won't own anything appropriate to the occasion. It was only after Alec's numerous reassurances that his Manticore training had in fact included proper etiquette and learning how to blend in with the haute monde, that she was willing to let us buy our own things rather than having her superior secretary purchase them and send them over to us. Well for the senator's information, I did happen to own something suitable. It just didn't feel right wearing the red dress that Logan had bought for me when I was going somewhere with Alec. So I'd kept my mouth shut. 

I smile as I remember the imitation of a proper sniff he'd given as he'd handed over half of the money and told me to remember to buy something that would not shame mumsy dearest, the belying expression in his eyes indicating that whatever I purchased he'd have fun taking it off of me later. I grunt as I finish tugging the last of the curlers out of my hair and dubiously pick up the bottle of hairspray. Never really did see the point of spraying glue on yourself but its all for a good cause I suppose.  Gulping in a deep breath of air I tilt my head down over the sink and hit the trigger.

He took advantage of my obvious indisposition by sneaking up behind me and wrapping his long arms around my waist.  Unfortunately for him he startles me so badly that I immediately straightened up bashing the top of my head on his chin and spraying him in the face with the awful gunk that I was lathering on my hair.  We both broke into a paroxysm of coughs and fell onto the floor, my fall cushioned nicely by his body.

"Oof.  Gel Maxie," he untangled one of his arms from beneath my body and patted his own neatly spiked hair.  "You should always go with gel, it gets much better hold and doesn't stick your nose hairs together."  I flip my body over so that I'm lying across his chest with my nose almost touching his.

"Oh yes Golden Boy you are indeed the top of fashion."  His eyes widen at the implied criticism and he pats his hair down again.  I feel almost sorry for a moment, but then his lower lip thrusts out in a deep pout and I suddenly just have to nibble it.  Apparently I'm not forgiven yet because he melts into the kiss for a few minutes and when I'm good and distracted he grabs my ribs.  He tickles me breathless and finely hauls both of us onto our feet.  Automatically he begins to brush the dust off of me and then his breath catches.

"Wow."  His eyes widen in amazement and I feel a smirk growing on my lips.  "I mean wow Maxie.  You look just, uhm, wow."  Not that he was the first guy to tell me I cleaned up well, but it seems to mean so much more coming from him.  Besides that, I have to admit that he looks just amazing in a tuxedo.  The fitted jacket clings tightly against his broad shoulders and molded arms, and the cummerbund rests flat against his smooth stomach.  Unconsciously I lick my lips.

"Wow to you to, Mr. Articulate."  Okay someone had to say it.  "You clean up real nice."

"Thanks."  He breathes the word out like a caress and I find myself in serious danger of drowning in his eyes.  Suddenly jumping back he makes one of those strange male grunts and smacks his forehead.  Jogging back to the living room he promptly returns with a bouquet of slightly crushed red roses and a four inch wide leather covered box.  "Uh, they got a little crushed on the way over here, there was this guy on a bike, and this old lady, and uh.  Yeah, I'm sorry; they got a bit messed up."  You know its love when they can't even get out a coherent sentence in your presence.

"They're beautiful."  I'm being quite truthful.  The roses aren't really all that crushed and they glow with the most vibrant shade of red I've ever seen.

"They reminded me of you."  My heart melts into little puddles on the floor.  "Oh yeah, I got something else for you too.   I was really stupid this morning.  I should have thought to give you more than half of the money because women need to have all of that extra stuff like jewelry and shoes.  So I though that I should use what I had leftover to buy something to go with the dress.  Don't get to excited I couldn't afford the Hope diamond or anything."  He'd misinterpreted the expression on my face.  I don't care if it's a hemp necklace with a picture of a pot leaf in the middle.  No one, not even Logan has ever bought me jewelry before.

Looking apprehensive, he pulls the lid open and holds the box up towards me.  "I went to the three best department shops in the city and asked if any stunningly gorgeous, dark haired twenty year olds had bought formal gowns from them today.  Finally got a hit at Casal's.  I told the shop girl's that I wanted to buy a necklace to match my girlfriend's dress and they just about fell over themselves trying to help me."  The rational part of my brain tells me that they fell all over themselves not because they wanted to help me, but because they wanted him to take one of them home with the necklace.  In honor of the newer and more sensitive Max, I kept this little tidbit to myself and turned my attention back to the necklace.  Not that it was hard, he'd come away from his shopping expedition with a beautiful parure of small facet cut rubies, in the very center of which hung a quarter sized filigreed and enameled rose.  Most definitely not a piece of costume jewelry and I wondered how much of our allowance he'd spent on himself and how much he'd spent on me.

Holding my breath I leaned my head forward as he stepped around me and fastened the clasp of the necklace.  It dropped lightly against my chest, accentuating the gown and the tan of my skin with dots of blood red.


	5. Not A Scream

This chapter will be one of three in series.  If it seems like I'm jumping around a little, well I am.  Don't worry, I'll try to make it clear.  Look on the bright side I'm keeping the perspective shifts to every other chapter so far.  Still waiting for guess on chapter one's movie reference.  Since I haven't gotten any guesses, I'll give you a second clue, it involves no shoes.  Peace my friends.

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She didn't ask me how I'd gotten the beautiful old Bentley for the occasion. Even though she's transgenic like me, somehow her wonderful ex had instilled some silly code of ethics in her, a very untransgenic-like idea of right and wrong. Honestly, its not like I'd "borrowed" the car from a poor person, and it isn't as if I don't plan on returning it. 

For some reason she's decided that we aren't going to argue with each other anymore. I don't know why she's acting this way; reticent like if she yells at me she'll break me. I don't miss the getting punched in the nose but god I miss the fire in her when she gets all riled up. Half the reason for taking the car was getting a reaction out of her, but she'd only raised an eyebrow and given me a half there, half gone smile. 

 I glance at her out the corner of my eye and can't help smiling in pride at how gorgeous she looks all dolled up like that. In the running and screaming press to get out of the party, the hairspray had finally given it up and her hair now lay in gorgeous tendrils across her pale face. She'll be okay; I have enough medical training not to be worried about her. All she needs is a few pints of blood and it'll be easy enough for me to provide it for her once we get home. Keeping one hand on the wheel I reach out and take one of her small hands in my own.   
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I take her small hand in my own, squeezing it once for reassurance as I help her out of the car and toss the keys to the young pimply faced valet. The valet gives both my girl and my car a once over and sighs before my glare sends him sliding into the drivers seat and speeding away. She shivers lightly beside me, though I can't say whether it's from the damp chill of a Seattle evening or overwrought nerves. Me, I'm nervous as hell, but I've been trained for scenarios like this. Max may be every bit as good at the knock down, drag out fighting, but this is my domain.  I squelch the feelings of pride, definitely shouldn't be taking pleasure in knowing how to stalk my prey, how to make the kill before they even feel the danger.

"Are you there handsome?"  The whisper of her fingertips against my cheek shakes me out of my reverie.  My cheeks flush in shame at the direction my thoughts had been taking, but now isn't really the time to think about it.  I flash my charm smile smoothly.

I am wealthy, I have money and confidence, old money perhaps, and so I have to play it subtle.  I've chosen to wear no jewelry, save for a class ring from Stamford which I'd "borrowed" from a mark out in the still posh business district, and a pair of plain gold cuff links.  My voice should be lower and less brash.  Manticore had taught us to speak in the unaccented English of the middle states, but on escaping I'd chosen to adopt the rougher tones of the street.  Alexander Harper would sound more refined, as would his lovely girlfriend Carmella Maritas.  Max had whined endlessly at the senator for not putting her chosen name on the invitations, but she'd insisted that something so ethnic would lend an exotic air.  

Balding and thick around the middle, the proper looking man at the door seems more concerned with making sure that we're appropriately dressed, than with looking carefully at the papers I presented to him.  After a close inspection he waves us lazily through the grand entryway to the hotel, and I enter a world which I has been closed to me since my assassin years.

Visually, the lobby is simply stunning.  On this special occasion the lights are dimmed and taper candles in finely wrought candelabrum sparkle brightly, reflecting in gilt mirrors.  Strains of one of Vivaldi's concertos filter through from the ballroom, and the music draws me like a moth to the flame.  I'm about to step through the entryway, when Max's deceptively strong hand, tugging not so softly on my sleeve, draws me up short.

"That's him over there."  She tilts her head to one side, as if laughing at something I'm saying, and she tilts her chin sharply at the other side of the room.  I silently curse myself out for not noticing him immediately, because he's not an easy man to miss.  I'm not short by any means and this guy easily tops me by six inches.  His frame is well fleshed out, once athletic and now becoming slightly flabby with the good living of his fifties.  A shock of pale graying blond hair reflects the light like a signal beacon.  He's surrounded by a half dozen young men, all hanging with disgusting intentness on every word he says.  I note with interest that when approached by a curvaceous young blond, looking remarkably like the ones I used to date pre-Max, he turns coolly away and continues talking to his fan club.  Not gay I think, but rather of the Sherlock Holmes method of thought, that women were merely consorts for weaker men.

"Doesn't look like the seduction routine works on Bradley.  If we're going to separate it looks like we'll be better off with me trying to infiltrate his little circle of hanger's on."  She continues scanning the room wearily, but nods her head at me.  She lets out with a sudden, sparkling peal of laughter which startles me, before lowering her voice and speaking.

"In the meantime, I'll see what I can work out of the other senator's.  Burnhart gave me a list of his cronies and political enemies, and I doubt that all of them will abstain from the fairer sex."  I glare at her insinuation, but mostly I want to tell her to be careful.  To speak it might be to jinx us though, so I bite my tongue.  This might be the first mission we've gone on together which shouldn't even have the possibility of involving firearms.  She laughs at my obvious discomfort and gives me a little kiss on the cheek.

"I know, don't say it.  I promise to be careful.  Besides, what's the worst that could happen?"  I let her leave with that particularly damning statement.  When oh when would she learn not to tempt fate.


	6. Not A Bang

Hello all!  A big congratulation goes out first to Jennzabelle for guessing the movie reference, if you're out there Jennzabelle and still reading this towards the last two or three chapters you get to decide the harried fate of one of our favorite characters!  So my post midterm break is unfortunately coming to an end and I will once again be back to posting once a week or so.  Since the chapters I'm posting right now are sort of continuations of each other I'll try to make the postings more frequent.  At the end of this chapter look forward (or not) to the return of a main character.  Enjoy!

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I love him with every fiber of my being, but sometimes he really creeps me out.  He hands me out of the car like a proper gentleman and glares down the valet ogling my ass.  Still acting like some modern day Cary Grant, he offers me his arm and drawing on the same bank of old movie knowledge I settle my hand in the crook of his elbow.  That's when it begins.  

Earlier he'd tried to explain it to me, but I don't think that I'd really understood him.  He's said that it was something like acting, becoming another person, putting on a costume, creating a new set of mannerisms.  This was so much more though.

For a few moments, he just stopped.  He didn't move, his eyes focused straight ahead on some invisible spot, he didn't so much as breathe.  Then in shifts I watched the transformation come over him.  His spine straightened, not to military precision, but enough to make him seem an inch or so taller.  A light tilt to the chin and a sharper set to his generously proportion mouth, give him an air of superiority.  The light in his eyes dimmed just a bit.  It reminded so painfully of the twelve and his soldier mode that I felt my breath catch sharply in my throat.  It will profit me nothing to freak out like this, I force myself to calm down and take a few deep breaths.

Noticing my respiratory distress he squeezes my hand once for reassurance.  Now though, that is all the comfort he can give because we're moving towards the grand hotel and the freaking party.  I'm really not looking forward to this.  Alec may be trained for these kinds of situations, but I thankfully broke out of Manticore before I had to learn any of this crap.

I rub my hand nervously against the cold and clammy damp of my chest and my hand brushes against the warmed surface of rubies and gold.  The gift gives me some kind of hidden strength and I force myself to remember that underneath it all, he's the man who gives me gifts and fights by my side.  I don't have to like this Alexander guy as long as I remember that I love Alec.

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For what seems like the billionth time tonight I lean my head back, touch my hand to my throat, and let out a tiny peal of lady-like laughter.  I swear if Alec doesn't come rescue me in the next five minutes he isn't getting any action for a month.  Okay, maybe a week.  The senator's that I've been schmoozing with for the past three hours are as dull and dry as dirt as they come.  If that isn't bad enough, I keep getting thrown into the company of the dilettantes and society wives and they sure as hell haven't got anything interesting to say.  

I snag one of the waiters milling around and snatch another glass of champagne.  When you have the metabolism of a three year old alcohol doesn't really do anything for you.  After the mind numbing boredom I've endured tonight I might raid Alec's liquor collection when I get home and test that little theory.  I'm thinking that unless Alec has gotten some prime information out this Bradley guy then the evening has been a total bust intelligence wise.  At least the clothes aren't returnable.  There is no way after all of this hassle, that Burnhart is getting her money back.

I'm just beginning to think that there's no way that this party can get any more boring when a spray of machine gun fire shatters the engineered cool of jazz piano and polite conversation.  Is it odd to be relieved when you get shot at?  I grunt as one of the young dilettantes faints next to me falling and knocking me over in the process.  In retrospect the floor is probably a safer place to be.  Using the society darling as a human shield I peek up over his anemic shoulders and scope out the dance floor.

All black suits with ski masks, oh that's really original.  I decide that they'd probably had those outfits handed down from their great-great, corporate thieving grandparents.  I try in vain to spot Alec in the melee but half of the partygoers have dropped to the floor in fear and the other half of them are trying to trample each other on their way to the exits.  Another ratchet of bullets halts the crush towards the doors and brings absolute silence.

Everyone's eyes are drawn to the grand staircase to the only movement in the room.  A short Spaniard descends slowly, glancing right and left like a queen conferring favor on her royal subjects.  When he reaches the first landing where the two arching staircases combine into one, he pauses and we all wait expectantly for him to speak.  If he doesn't tell us what the hell he's after I can't get to kicking his ass.

"Welcome children!  Welcome to Uncle Pardido's parade."  Why I ask myself, why must all of our arch nemesis be nuttier than a snicker's bar?  "If you will all kindly remain lying on that floor, I will just pick up a few weekend guests and be on my way."  I edge carefully on my knees towards the back wall.  If I can scoot back far enough I can reach the large rows of pillars lining the edge of the room and use one of them as cover.  I'm just inches from safety when my foot strikes the padded surface of someone's stomach.

I turn around to apologize and find myself looking into an unfortunately familiar pair of eyes.

"Hello Max."


	7. Just A Little Whimper

Okay, I realized when I was writing this that if I wanted to keep it at three parts I would have to write my little fingers off on this chapter.  So enjoy it, this may be the longest chapter that I ever write.  Congrats to those of you that guessed the movie correctly, and also to those of you who guessed who our mystery guest would be (I just couldn't leave a canon character out of the stories for that long).  Just saw Bridget Jone's Diary last night, best movie I've seen in a while.  If you're going through a men suck phase then you'll enjoy it.  Peace and Luv- SilverRain.

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She is the vision of a memory, an embodiment of emotion given human form. I'd felt many emotions towards that tiny woman, all of them intoxicatingly powerful. She had not been so inspired by me. I know because she'd told me to my face. Nothing more than friendship, never anything more than friendship. Rip my guts out and serve them up to me on a platter, held in little slender hands. She'd thought me an idealist and a romanticist. The one at her side is not such a man as I am. Not the kind to teach her love, not the kind to teach her right from wrong. Despite what she might think, she is just a child and she needs such lessons. Will he, even more a child in the ways of the world teach them to her? All he has to teach is pain and death and blind obedience. The first two are anathema and I strive to wipe them from the world. I admit that the third might be useful to her in small quantities since she obeys no one but her own lawless little conscience, but he seems to have abandoned that particular lesson on the day he met her, much to my regret. Regret, I have so much of it just looking at her. She dazzles in that dress, not that she needs such enhancements but they turn her from a queen to a goddess. The laughter makes her look so full of life and I can't help but wonder what he could say that she would find so amusing. In all fairness he, like the jewels at her neck, is the perfect enhancement to her beauty. Tall and broad and younger than me by far, but he looks different tonight. Not blank as he had when I'd seen him last just after the hostage crisis, but rather almost aristocratic. Playing the part I suppose, I'm sure this is what he had been trained for during his schooling, fit in to your prey's habitat, blend in and then strike. I wonder if he frightens her, despite all her fearlessness. Is it painful to look into the eyes of the man you think you love and see a stranger in his body? Apparently she's coping with it. I watch jealously as she rises onto the tips of her toes and kisses him lightly on the cheek. They separate and wander to different sides of the party. Now is my chance to play the game. Let the chips fall where they may.   
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"Senator Bradley?" It's an odd feeling to have to look up at another man.   
  
"Yes son, what can I do for you?" His accent is a thickly polished Alabaman drawl that brings good ol' boys and peach cobbler to mind. Or I suppose they would have I ever met the former or eaten the latter. I try not to wince at the crick in my neck as I crane to look him in the face.   
  
"It is a vast honor to meet you sir. I did my doctoral thesis at Stanford on your Casely amendment. I just wanted to shake the hand of a living legend." Down boy, resist the temptation to lay it on too thick. Fortunately, he has enough ego not to find my beaming hardiness in the least bit suspicious.   
  
"Aw yes the Casely amendment, one of ma best pieces of legislation. See young fella, this is just what I was talkin about earliuh to those other young gents. You've got to strike while the iron is hot if you want to pass yuh laws through. Take the Casely legislation, if those poor young men hadn't had that awful misfortune then I could never have brought safety to the streets of Montgomery."   
  
I smile fatuously at the senator and nod my head. I have to give the guy credit for charm and speaking skills. What he really meant by his pretty little speech as that if a half dozen young men hadn't been lynched during a riot through Montgomery during a food shortage, then he never would have been able to convince his voters to sign off on Marshall Law. I'm saved from having to comment on Bradley's cleverness by the imminent arrival of machine-gun wielding men in black. So much for the no firearms theory.   
  
Reacting on inbred instincts I tackle the senator to the floor. Raising myself to one knee I kick out with the other foot and snap two of the legs off the nearest table. It falls to make a neat shield which will easily cover the two of us. Bad guy or not it's probably best to keep the senator alive until Burnhart's decides what she wants done with him. Besides, if he is a good guy Max will beat me senseless for letting him get shot.   
  
Max, shit, I lost track of her hours ago and I don't know where she is now. Worse than that I seem to have knocked Senator Bradley unconscious when I tackled him to the floor. He'll survive the concussion but I don't want him to get hit by crossfire while I'm not here to protect him.   
  
Leave the Senator where he is and risk him getting damaged while I'm gone or stay with him and trust that Maxie can take care of herself? Since the second barrage of shots went off the place has been utterly silent, I can hear my own erratic breaths. I can hear the soft whimpers of frightened dilettantes and socialites and the sobbing of men and women of power.   
  
A scream rings out through the echoing ballroom, up on the balcony off to my left. The voice is chillingly familiar. The soldier is outranked by the lover and I leave the Senator lying on his back in the middle of the ballroom floor without a second thought.   
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He's staring at me with uncomfortable intensity. His impeccable tuxedo and Clark Kent glasses making him look like an overgrown little boy.   
  
"Logan!" My voice rises in fervent indignation, the last thing I need in an emergency situation is another person's back to watch.   
  
"Max, what are you doing here? When I heard on the news about the transgenics getting freed I assumed that you wouldn't need to go on anymore heists." The words, on the news and heist ring like accusations. I suppose he's mad that he didn't get an insider report on my people's freedom.   
  
"I'm working Logan." Let him wonder whether I meant information gathering or assassination or thievery. "And I could ask you the very same questions. Of course we seem to be surrounded by fine wine and well dressed people so I suppose you could just be soaking in the lost ambience."   
  
"I happen to be working as well, and the particulars are not any of YOUR business." His voice starts to rise towards the end of the statement and he's practically shouting at me now. "I just don't understand you Max you used to care about the cause and now what's happened to you? I'm sure your here with your little soldier boy ready to rip off some poor innocent civilians. You think they'll let your people stay out in the real world for long when the crime rates jump off the charts? They'll have you caged up again faster than you can say..."   
  
"Would you shot your goddamned mouth!" I hiss angrily at him clamping my hand over his mouth for reinforcement. If he's not careful he'll attract the attention of the many men milling around with guns.   
  
"Now, now senor, obviously no one has taught you that it is impolite to yell at a lady." The man waves the gun in his hand around for emphasis.   
  
"That is her Carlos, one of the ones we are supposed to take." Oh no, this is so definitely not good. I'm partially worried for my own safety and mostly worried that Logan will do something brave and incredibly stupid in my defense.   
  
"Sorry Nina." I'm so distracted by the two men in front of me that I don't notice the one creeping up behind me. The one who has decided for no good reason that the easiest way of kidnapping me is to thwack me on the back of the head with the butt of his rifle.   
  
Obviously he never took transgenic anatomy and physiology in high school. We're fast, strong, intelligent and for some unfathomable reason pretty. Our cranial bones are also about an inch thicker and a good deal denser than the average humans. All that masked man number three had just accomplished was giving me a splitting migraine and making me really damn pissed off.   
  
Unfortunately, Logan seemed to be behind on his transgenic information too because he sprang forward to shield my body with his and only succeeded in knocking my own poor and abused head against the marble floor. A small scream makes it past my normally stoical control and I'm sure that my head is definitely bleeding now because I can feel something warm and slick trickling down the back of my neck.   
  
I feel the weight of Logan's body being hauled off of me and strong calloused hands yanking me up off the floor with no regard for my damaged head.   
  
"We have the girl boss. Has Bradley been picked up? Yes sir." My captor has one of those hand held walkie talkies that you see in the bad guys carrying in action movies and I'm starting to wonder who's more of a movie junkie Alec or this Pardido guy.   
  
"Thank you ladies and gentleman for welcoming us into your hearts and homes. My dear sons will just be taking a few parting gifts and then our family will be just a mere memory in no time." Said crazy guys voice echoes up from the first floor. So they're after Senator Bradley too. I can only hope that Alec is keeping a close eye on him.   
  
"Come on Senora." One of the men in black tightens his grip around me and pulls a large wickedly curved knife from somewhere. I try not to giggle as I wonder where he was keeping it in that skin tight black outfit.   
  
"Let her go. You'll never get away with this." Could Logan get more cliché? Especially delivering his lines in that purposefully calm and professional tone of voice, he sounded like Dudley Doright telling the bad guys that they were, well bad guys.   
  
"Give her over to me." A fourth man in black has appeared on the scene and this one sounds like he's in charge. The burly guy holding onto me carefully shoves me into his companions waiting arms while still managing to keep the edge of the knife at my neck.   
  
This fourth man is different though, thinner, smaller, and no smell of rum and sweat. Carefully keeping the knife on me with one hand he brings his left hand up behind me so that it's hidden from view and gently skims his thumb across the length of my barcode. "Ssshhhhh."   
  
The man begins backing towards the staircase supporting me with an arm across the ribs. That's when the ever brave Logan makes his move rushing the two of us so that we all go sprawling to the floor. Miraculously the man holding me manages to yank the knife back at the last second and I twist my body around so that by great luck my throat isn't slit like a fish. Unfortunately, the knife isn't entirely redirected and it makes a nasty slice across my upper arm an inch or two deep.   
  
Rolling around on the floor the two men try to gain leverage on the knife. Within a few seconds the man in black gets the proper angle to hit Logan on the back of the head knocking him unconscious. Before he can pick himself up off the floor though my original captors walkie talkie begins to beep urgently.   
  
"What? Yes sir. Yes sir I understand. Stand up and turn around slowly bastardo." With lightening quickness, my rescuer jumps onto the banister and then vaults over the other men's heads. Before they have time to turn around he grabs them both by the collars and bashes their heads together.   
  
My head is getting swimmy from blood loss but over the beating of my own pulse I can hear the sounds of reinforcements pounding up the back stairs.   
  
My rescuer scoops me up in his arms and jumps up onto the wide banister of the grand staircase. The smooth motion of sliding down the railing makes me nauseous and the heavy jolt of the two of us landing on the floor isn't any better. I'm almost dropped when a bullet grazes against his arm but the damage isn't bad and he grips me harder to his chest. The sounds of the gunfire behind us begin to fade off as I feel the chill of the damp night air on my skin again.   
  
"You forgot my shawl in there." Groping behind his head I get a grip on the back of the ski mask and pull it off of Alec's head.   
  
"Sorry darling, it won't happen again."   
  
"How often do you plan on getting shot at during really fancy parties?" My voice is starting to sound drugged and weary, and he gently shifts my weight to a more comfortable position in his arms.   
  
"Well I plan on staying around you for quite a long time so I imagine that it'll happen again." The swimmy feeling in my head is getting heavier and I let my head droop against his chest.   
  
"Sleep now Maxie." The last thing I feel is his lips brushing against my forehead. 


	8. No Yelling in the Halls

"I'm so sorry Maxie, I let them take Bradley."  My voice is hoarse from lack of sleep, my head rests lightly on the bed beside her stomach.  Our hands are joined, our fingers twined keeping a gentler connection than the harsh plastic tubing which joins our writs together.  She runs the fingers of her free hand through my riled hair.

"It's okay Alec.  I'm sure there wasn't anything you could do about it."  Her voice is remote but eerily calm.  I want her to yell at me, get angry and wave her fists.  As though somehow her anger absolves my crimes.  She won't lose her shield of calm though, she just continues to run her hands mechanically through my hair.    


	9. Learning to Love Again

Hi guys!  So I took a little break from the action in this chapter, and oh my gosh it was hell to write.  Normally emotion is easier for me to write but I think I had something of a mental roadblock.  I also read this over and over again and I've decided that Max needs to get some more backbone, cause I'm writing her on the weak side.  So prepare for Max to be opening some cans of whoop ass in the next few chapters.  Nothing but love for y'all- SilverRain

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My head rests on the bed next to her stomach. Our fingers twine tightly together making a stronger bond than the plastic tubing which connects our wrists together. Her face still looks too pale to me, but as I lose color her cheeks grow less ashen.   
  
The report had come in from Senator Burnhart about an hour ago. Along with stealing some four million dollars worth of jewelry and art, the party crashers had kidnapped Senator Bradley, some other chic senator from South Carolina, and prominent scion of the hoverdrone industry, Logan Cale.   
  
Max remained unconscious all through the night and into this morning. This is the second transfusion I've given her and barring any unforeseen trouble she'll be fine, sort of. Physically at least she's recovering, but she now seems more withdrawn than ever from me emotionally, and I haven't got the vaguest notion of what to do about it. She's awake now but her eyes remain distant, glazed over and unseeing. The fingers of her left hand stroke mechanically through the tangled locks of my hair.   
  
Really, I was hoping that she'd get angry at me for losing Bradley, for doing the stupid thing and running off to rescue her. I didn't leave out a single detail when I told her how I'd abandoned the guy unconscious in the middle of a crisis. Even her disappointment would be easier to bear than this unresponsiveness.   
  
"Burnhart understood that we couldn't really mount a blazing counterstrike in the middle of a crowded party without blowing our covers. She says she has her top people working on tracing the gang, and she'll get back to us when she has any information." She nods her head lethargically but doesn't bother looking up.   
  
"I'm sorry that they took Logan. I had no idea that they were planning on kidnapping him too." Please don't let that be why she's all freaked out, I don't think I could bare it.   
  
"No big deal. I'm sure we'll find them." I'm relieved, that she isn't worried about him too much, that she can still speak even if it does sound dull and dead as dry wood. "How's your shoulder doing?"   
  
The bullet had only grazed my shoulder, a little furrow less than a half inch deep. I know that she's changing the subject on me, and I know that I can't allow her to do that. Not if I want to find out once and for all what's been bothering her.   
  
Gently holding up the tubing connecting my left arm to her right one I creep up higher on our bed until our faces are inches apart. Her eyes focus unsteadily on my face and I'm wondering if she's seeing me or some phantom of her mind. "Come on Maxie look at me."   
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I thought the dreams would end after a few weeks, or at least fade in intensity. All that I've been able to do is learn to control my reaction to them. He doesn't know that I still dream of holding his lifeless body in my arms, out there on a muddy battlefield. He can't know because I haven't woken up screaming and crying for weeks now. That doesn't mean that I don't have to see it almost every night.   
  
And I'm scared, I'm so afraid that I'm going to lose him again. First I'd lost him to the twelve, and then I'd let that bitch Lela take him prisoner.   
  
Transgenics are made tough, and strong, and fast. That doesn't mean we're indestructible though. The twelve is haunting enough in its way because it was the first time that I thought he might be gone from my life, and the first time that that thought scared me. Our final confrontation with the familiars had been worse. Watching him hold the poison and knowing as the knife came towards him that he was willing to die if it meant saving the world. Standing over the pile of limbs and deadweight that was him and Biggs. Biggs died, and it could have been him so easily.

I thought it would be alright once we'd beat back the familiars.  We're supposed to be free now to live our lives like normal people.  I know now that it's never going to happen.  Now I'll always be wondering whether I could have found another way to gain my people's freedom.  A way that doesn't put the life of the man I love in danger.

 "I can't lose you Alec.  Not after I've only just found you.  I know I've been walking on eggshells with you for a while now, avoiding arguments.  It's just that, if I'm going to lose you tomorrow or the next day, then I want to know that we've filled our time with all the love we can."  I wait for him to speak but he stays still as death, afraid to break the spell that finally has me talking.  I know he wants more, but the words are hard.

"I don't know if I can do this with you.  I worry so much every time we go on a mission, and worse than that I know that if you're worrying about me you'll be distracted and it might make you slower or sloppier.  What happened yesterday is exactly what I mean.  The soldier would have left me and taken care of Bradley.  The man shouldn't even be in a situation like that.  I just.  It's just I can't even begin to guess how we're supposed to balance the two."  His hands grip my face fiercely, cupping both cheeks.

"Do you think that you're the only revved up super soldier in the world Maxie?  Because newsflash for you, you aren't.  Even if we weren't together I'd still have to work at balancing these two lives, freedom or no.  This is my choice and responsibility just as much as it is yours.  Besides, this situation involves me a great deal more than it involves you."  My eyes widen at the onslaught.

"Yeah cause you're really mister responsibility."  The words pop out of my mouth completely unchecked and I clamp my fingers to my lips in embarrassment.   The basso profundo of his laugh shocks me.   He tugs my fingers gently off my mouth and covers my lips with his.

"That's more like it.  That is definitely the Maxie that I know and love.  Now just promise me two things." 

"What?"  My voice is high pitched with petulance.

"First that you won't ever, not argue with me again.  It's a complete subversion of your contrary nature, and you look incredibly hot when you get all bothered.  And second."  His lips swoop down on mine again plundering them for all he's worth, before he pulls back.  "Second, never, ever doubt that my love for you and your love for me can't overcome anything."  His hands are wandering now in a particularly delicious fashion and I'm slowly losing track of what we were arguing about in the first place.  I twine my fingers through his already mussed up hair and pull him down so that his body covering mine.  

"Owww, shit that hurt."  I realize that in my haste to get closer I'd managed to yank the IV out of his arm taking a small chunk of skin with it.

"Want me to kiss it and make it better?"  His hands wander rather lower, giving me all the answer that I need.

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It isn't until an hour or so later, as I'm lying completely spent on the bed that my mind finally filters through our conversation to the point that's been bugging me.

"Alec?"  My world tilts slightly as he shifts into a more upright position, I've been using his chest as a pillow.

"Yes my darling?"  His hands begin their lazy roaming again and I know I have to move quickly if I'm going to get another coherent thought out again.

"What did you mean when you said that you were more involved in this situation than I was?"  His body tenses guiltily beneath mine, and his hands freeze on my hips.

"It all happened a long time ago Maxie."  I flip over so that I'm staring him directly in the face.  He knows better than to hold back when I put on my serious face.

"Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you.  It all started on this little desert island."


	10. Tango de Maxine

Circle left, back foot sweep, his hands slide down my ribs to my hips dropping me in a dip and then snapping me back to rest on his shoulder. Twist left, twist backwards and turn my torso so that my whole body spins beneath the cover of his. He lifts me in the air on one hand, I arch my back and swing up my arms before dropping and catching myself by wrapping my legs around his middle.   
  
"I think you gave me whiplash on that one." Slide down his body like a fireman's pole and land on my feet catlike. He spins me in tight fast circles until our faces are almost touching again.   
  
"You're a big girl, you can take it. Now do you see him, or am I making an ass of myself on the dance floor for nothing?" He swings me from arm to arm before lowering me in a deep dip as the music ends. Not that I'll say so, because god knows that his ego is mammoth enough on its own, but he's making anything but an idiot of himself dancing. In fact I'm currently forced to stare down a particularly voluptuous red head from across the room that happens to be concentratedly eyeing his ass.   
  
"Max? Did you hear me? I asked if you saw Felipe out there." Glancing around casually he drops his hands to my hips and steers me off the crowded dance floor to the tables beyond. This place absolutely reeks of tequila and cigarette smoke, as well as the obvious odors attendant on a dance floor packed with tangoers.   
  
We flop down at one of the few empty tables at the perimeter of the bar, running close to exhausted from all of the dancing. After three hours at this stupid club we have yet to catch sight of our mark. I pluck disconsolately at the hem of my black mini dress. If there was one thing that sucked about working for the senator it was our total disagreement on what constituted proper costume for a night of reconnaissance.   
  
"I can't see squat, sitting in a corner like this Alec. We need to get a better view of the place, let's go up to the balcony." Air whoomphs out of his lungs as I grab his wrist and drag him out of the chair, and this is the virtually indestructible super soldier, tired after a couple hours of dancing. It's nice to know that at least in some ways he is a typical man.   
  
The scantily clad and odorously sweaty throngs press in on us as we climb the narrow spiral stairs to the second floor. I look back at Alec to make sure that he's keeping up with me and am forced to do a double take. Before we'd left the apartment tonight I'd helped him spray temporary black dye into his hair, even though I saw him go through the process I haven't yet gotten used to the new color on him. A swanky multicolored shirt, so completely unlike his usual wear, completes the disguise.   
  
Tricking me out proved more difficult. My black hair is completely resistant to any kind of temporary dying, not to mention the fact that any other color would seriously clash with my dark complexion. After much deliberation, Alec had disappeared for two hours in the city and returned with some white powdery substance in a plastic case. I don't have a clue what that junk was, but my skin went from cafe au lait to a very pale tan and despite the dancing and sweating the stuff hasn't faded. He swears that it wasn't dangerous, but then Alec's definition of dangerous and mine differ in some key areas.   
  
For my hair, he'd rubbed some dark red goo into it and mussed it up on top of my head. Then, much to my horror he produced a tube of black eyeliner and proceeded to lather it all over my eyelids. On a whole, the look is rather goth, punk, raver. Personally I think that my Latino favored looks would have fit in I much better at a salsa club, but I'd been seen by the kidnappers at the gala so Alec insisted that both of us go incognito. All I can say is that this damn stuff better wash right out of my hair.   
  
The view from the balcony shows a sea of writhing and twisting bodies, an orgy of dance. Our faces tighten imperceptibly as we focus our eyes to scan in detail. Brilliant idea senator, send us to pick up some Latin guy in a salsa club, just like trying to find a needle in a stack of needles. I mentally cross reference his file. If he's a ladies man then he'll probably be dancing or standing at the bar instead of closeted at one of the dark tables. Now I sort the remaining fifty or so men by size. This man is short and very thin ruling out another forty or so candidates. Three of them are too old or too young. One I notice is hitting, not on a girl, but another man ruling him out.   
  
"Those six." I point as subtly as I can at the remaining suspects.   
  
"It isn't the one all the way to the right or the third one from the left, their arms are both exposed and neither of them has a tattoo." I can't let him show me up. Focusing my eyes until I feel the beginnings of a tension headache forming at behind my brows I search their faces intently.   
  
"It isn't the guy with the Hawaiian shirt, he's got blue eyes. The one in green has got a nose to rival Cyrano Deborgerac so it can't be him. I'll take the guy in the white suit if you take the one with the baseball cap." Smirking at his expression of awe I take off back towards the lower level before he can close his mouth.

I skinny up to the bar and in my loudest and most drunken voice demand a cosmopolitan.  The bartender shakes his head at my girly choice of drinks and moves off to mix the cocktail for me.  Grimacing at the rime of dirt that coats my finger as I swipe it down the length of the bar, I lean perilously far over the counter and eventually overbalance myself.

"Watch it, idiota!"  The man who I've inadvertently fallen onto barks at me without turning around.  Not willing to give up I lower my voice until it's a husky contralto, eerily reminiscent of my half sister.

"Sorry there handsome, let me buy you a drink to make it up to you."  I tack a languishing giggle onto the end and gaze simperingly into his eyes as he slowly turns around.  "Oops."  I giggle again as I pretend to stumble back into his arms.  Instinctually he catches me around the shoulders, and for a moment his fingers dig into my arms.  The touch of his hands sets alarms off in my head as his fingers align themselves exactly with the bruises left on my shoulders the night of the gala.  My would be kidnapper gazed hungrily at my face.


	11. Good Cop, Pretty Cop

Hi guys hope your enjoying the story so far.  I'm at about the halfway point of this particular mission.  I've got another possible one in the works, but as always I prefer to post just one story at a time so you'll have to wait for the end of Dark Blue Sky.  That fabulous poll is coming up soon, deviousness and mayhem will ensue.  

Peace- SilverRain

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"So what's your name lovely?" 

  
"Jade."

   
"Just Jade? That's cool, pretty little thing like you don't need more than one name anyway. So tell me little miss Jade, do you come here often?" She nods her head mutely and gazes up at him like a doe caught in the headlights. I watch helplessly from my spot a few dozen feet away. Come on Maxie don't do this right now, you need to play the game. I need to snap her out of it. Abandoning my quarry, the ugly and obviously old scar running down his half exposed chest ruling the man out as a suspect, I push my way through the crowd towards the stage. A ten dollar bill later the mariacha player smiles and winks at me and I draw back from the stage to wait.   
  


"So many nights I have wandered alone,   
Without a land or home to call my own.   
So many days my life stretched endlessly,   
Until the day I had you here with me.   
Usted es mi amor encantador,   
mi vida divina en del colmo.   
Si usted fuera mi solamente,   
le haría a mi esposa.   
Déjeme sostenerle aquí por toda la hora,   
déjeme sostenerle en mis brazos.   
Bailemos esta canción,   
toquemos la lluvia,   
sin su tacto allí no es ninguna alegría,   
sin su vista allí es solamente dolor.   
  
"Its a beautiful song isn't my lovely Jade?" Felipe mistakes the faraway look in her eyes and moves to put his arm around her. She gives him a smile as dripping as acid and if I were him I would be cowering beneath the nearest piece of heavy furniture right now. Fortunatley Felipe is too stupid to be scared by her expression, which he foolishly seems be taking as a sign of affability.   
  


"So you haven't given me your name handsome."   
  


"My name is Marcus Raoul Verazmente. As always my sweet Jade, at your service." One of his few aliases, the man is neither creative enough, or safety conscious enough to come up with many of them.   
  


"Well Mr. Verazmente, it's like way to hot in here. Do you think you wouldn't mind going outside to catch some fresh air?" She holds out her hand daintily with another acid coated smile. I really have to work with her on keeping her facial expressions toned down. Still, she's come up with a brilliant plan for dragging him out of this too public area so that they can "talk", I can't help thinking that Manticore lost their most powerful agent on the day that she escaped. With the proper training she would surpass me by a mile.   
  


Felipe isn't stupid enough to turn down a beautiful women when she wants a little privacy with him and he bounds out toward the back alley with her like an eager puppy. An eager puppy that's about to get kicked in the head. I follow them out at a discreet distance, curious to see how Max plans on handling the little scum bag.   
  


My resolve to let her handle the situation flattens when the little prick tries smacking her rear end on the way out the door, but her cat like reflexes allow her to avoid it with a half playful, half "your going to die in five minutes" giggle. Recalling with a mixture of fondness and pain, the time that I'd gone one on one with Maxie in the boxing ring I don't envy Felipe one bit for what's coming to him. Stomach churning angrily I watch Max lounger herself against the dirty brick wall. Felipe leans in for a kiss, but never reaches her lips as the sound of bone crunching reverberates through the narrow alleyway.   
  


I wince softly at the blood pouring down Felipe's chin. Max has broken my nose enough times for me to know just how unpleasant it is. My sympathy for him flees when he blinks back the blood and tries to hit her on the chin with a nasty right hook. His fist never connects with her face though as she catches it in her left hand and twists it backwards towards the floor with an audible pop. If the little slimeball gets up from a dislocated shoulder then he's much tougher than I figured him. Apparently he isn't any tougher than I thought because he drops bonelessly to the ground alternately clutching at his profusely bleeding nose and his uselessly hanging shoulder. Grinning wickedly at my hidden place in the corner and sending delightful little tingles of lust through me, she reaches down and hauls Felipe to his feet by his collar.   
  


"We can do this the easy way or the hard way, it's entirely up to you." Max nods her head in my direction and I realize that she wants to play good cop bad cop with me.  Using every advantage of my speed I blur from the shadowy cloak of night, to her side and yank Felipe from her hands depositing him ungentley back on the ground.  His head snaps back hitting the wall as I drop him and his eyes bug out to the size of saucers at my sudden appearance.

"Now, now Jade, you've frightened our guest.  You know that the boss doesn't approve of roughing people up unnecessarily."  Felipe looks mightily relieved to hear this and relaxes a little in my grip.

"But Dick I haven't gotten any fun in so long!"  Her pout is a mile wide and makes her look cold-bloodedly adorable.  "Besides the boss ain't gonna know I roughed him up if Felipe here ain't around to tell no one about it."  Turning away from Felipe I roll my eyes at her and mouth the word "Dick?", she shrugs her elegant shoulders and grabs him by the collar again. I jerk my head at her in an attempt to get her to tone it down.  Far from spilling his guts to us Felipe has started struggling and thrashing in my grip and if the moron manages to hit my nose or one of my other favorite parts I'm going to be seriously tidged off.

"Okay Felipe my amigo, we understand that you and your boys pulled off a little thievery and kidnapping the other night.  While I personally am not aversed to a little creative breaking and entering, and am most definitely overly fond of the people you took, my boss now has a bug up her ass.  This can go very simply for you if you want it to.  You tell me where your boss took the nice people from the party and Jadey here lets you keep all of your internal, and external organs.  Now I will tell you that I've never seen her rip anyone's heart out of their chest, she's always wanted to try it.  She also has this adorable little collection of "souveniers" from other guys that have smacked her ass in the line of duty.  Believe me when I say that you want to cooperate fully with the dear girl.

Max gives Felipe her most feline grin and slowly licks her lips.

"Keep her away from me.  I said keep that little B…"  before he can even think of insulting the honor and virtue of the woman I love I use all of my strength and fling him across the ally so that he lands with marginal force inside an open dumpster.

"Let me jump in and get him Dick, please?  I'll only hurt him a little bit.  At first."  The sounds of furious scrabbling echoed from the trash bins.  "Okay Felipe here I come.  I'll even let you pick which part I remove first."

"Santa Maria, la madre de dios, salva mi alma.  Okay, okay San Pedro."


	12. Give Me Fever

You give me fever   
In the morning   
You give me fever   
In the evening   
Fever when you hold me tight   
  
Never knew how much I loved you   
Never knew how much I cared   
When you put your arms around me   
I get a feeling that's so hard to bear   
  
You give me fever   
You give me fever   
When you kiss me   
  
  
The music wafted in through the open window accompanied by the course tang of seawater and dead fish. Salt air slicked against my skin and natted my hair as I stuck my head out the window. The accomodations weren't much to look at, just a steel framed double bed and a beat up dresser with a bible in the bottom drawer. There wasn't a tv, a fact which Alec had pointed out to me three times with varying degrees of annoyance. He was now lying on his back exactly in the center of the bed, his fingers snapping absently to the beat of the jazz music in the bar below us. 

  
He looks so tired, both of us do I'm sure. After we'd finished working Felipe over the we'd dragged his sorry ass all the way back to the Senator's mansion and left him bound and gagged in her outer office, much to the annoyance of the fussy looking assistant. Burnhart hadn't said much, just barked out some orders to the assistant over the intercom and told us to go home and pack because she'd booked us on the first flight out the next afternoon. One of her lackeys was waiting for us at the airport with a pair of economy class tickets, a half dozen maps of the city, a rent-a-car receipt, and a packet with two thousand in cash.   
We'd driven past the nicer parts of the city to settle in Cabirillo Marina. The out of date tour book had detailed nice restaurants and expensive shops. Now the waterfront had attracted gangs, thugs, and prostitutes post-pulse, because a shipping port meant smuggling these days. Layers of dirt make it easier to go unnoticed, Alec said, when you're going undercover. Personally I believe that Manticore was cheap and wasn't about to go putting a bunch of brainwashed teenagers in a nice hotel where people would ask too many questions. I shake my head in an attempt to clear my thoughts. 

  
The night is chilly but the damp in the air causes my hair to cling to my neck. The light raspy snoring from the bed tells me that Alec has dropped off to sleep. There's a full moon tonight and now that it's risen little rays of the light stream through the window and reflect off the dull metal of the bed frame and the mirror in the bathroom. His summer tan looks washed out in the moonlight, the pallor making him look half dead against the field of the dark blue comforter. A small shiver runs up my spine at the thought and I try to shut off my morbid imagination. 

Creeping over to the bed I sit down on the edge of the mattress and lean in closer to him until I can see up close the slight up and down motions of his chest as he breathes. Sparkling unnaturally white against the rest of his skin are a half dozen half-healed scars. We both need a break from this, he shouldn't bear any marks from the bullet wounds he'd gotten during the hostage crisis, it had been more than a month ago and the stem cells in his blood should have regenerated new skin by now. He's had too many injuries in a row and so have I. After this mission is completed we need to take a break, get out of Seattle and away from the senator and take time to heal up and relax. If we survive this, it we don't then I suppose that we'll be getting all the rest we need when we're dead. 

  
He hadn't bothered climbing under the covers before he went to sleep and his skin is cold to the touch from exposure to the damp night air. I slide closer to him cover his exposed skin with my body. 

  
"You're warm." I'd been so wrapped up in my thoughts that I hadn't noticed the change in his breathing as he woke. He pulls me lightly so that the whole of my weight is supported by his body.

   
"Do I give you fever?" He buries a laugh in my hair so that little tendrils of it flutter off my forehead.   
"Every kind of fever there is baby." His lips press languorously against mine as his hands wind through my hair to draw me closer. He runs an infuriatingly soft line of kisses against my jaw and neck before working lower into more satisfying territory. The kisses burn reassuringly against the cold kindling warmth in my stomach and limbs. 

  
"I do love you Alec." His arms tighten around me and he brings his lips back up to my forehead. 

  
"I love you to Maxie." I feel my lips trembling slightly as he rubs his thumb across my cheeks and lips. "I'm not going anywhere, nothings going to happen." He knows he can't promise me anything. He knows he's tempting fate just by saying what he has. His hands wander against the skin of my stomach as he gets back to his pre-interruption activities. This is different, slower and almost frighteningly intense. We can be slow, we have forever. Tonight, we have forever.


	13. Catwalk in the Park

_"He's gone, I'm sorry."  I pound my fists into his flesh, but his skin is already cold and slick beneath my touch.  I drop his hand from where I'd laid it against my stomach.  An inhuman howl rips, bone deep from my lips.  My fingers numbly trace the weal-lined symbols gashed into his chest and I silently vow revenge on the scattered remainders of the gang._

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_I fling myself out of the makeshift shelter and into the magnetized storm raging outside.  The gutted palm trees offer little shelter as I dash between them, and the palm fronds which I'd ironically found pretty when I arrived on the island slash into my skin as I run leaving small welts and thin trails of blood on my arms and legs.  A brilliant flash of lightning illumines the dark blue sky and I fling myself to the ground lest my pursuers catch sight of me.  A small chunk of palm tree trunk disappears in front of me, splintered and eaten away, a small dart embedded in the bark.  My last coherent thought as I battle the encroaching darkness is that they must have some kind of air propellant to make the darts go so far._

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My feet tread silently across the rusted metal gratings of the catwalk.  Feline DNA, catwalk, I start to giggle and then realize that the situation isn't entirely appropriate to humor.  I stop exactly four feet from the window and press my back against the rough brick wall of the supposedly abandoned apartment building.  Pressing my ear against the wall I make out the sounds of deep breathing and shallow snoring.  At least eight men, maybe as many as twelve slumbering in the room beyond.  

Sliding my hand cautiously into the lower cargo pocket of my black pants I pull out the high powered penlight and flash it twelve times in rapid succession towards the darkened alley down below.  It's better to be safe than sorry in my experience.  I wait tensely for a few moments until another pencil thin beam of light hits the wall beside me and pauses before flashing four times.  Four perimeter guards watching the lower floor of the building and another dozen of them in the second floor apartment, presumably keeping an eye on the hostages.  That makes for a total of sixteen men and that's assuming that there aren't any more waiting in other rooms in the house, not very good odds for two lone rebels, even if they happen to be revved-up.  

A small metallic ringing sounds behind me and I turn around in time to grab Max's hand and pull her up onto the catwalk beside me.  She lands almost silently on her feet and I almost break into a fit of laughter as I watch her face pause and then crinkle up as she gets the obvious joke.  "Catwalk?"  She snickers silently in response.  I roll my eyes softly and pull out the glock which has been strapped like a newborn baby to my back in a clever little holster since the beginning of this trip.  Her doe eyes widen softly.

"Killing them?"  She mouths the words in perfect silence.  I can sense within her the basic moral dilemma which has plagued her ever since her escape.  The men inside of the apartment are hardened criminals, and if they're the same bastards that worked for the cult five years ago, then they're capable of some pretty heinous acts of butchery.  Her eyes are still resting on me wide as the moon though and I remind myself that she has never seen the results of their work up close and personal, she's never held one of her teammate's lifeless bodies in her arms and as a result she can still afford charity.

"Only if I have to."  Maybe I'm growing soft in my old age or maybe we don't have time for this discussion and I'm only trying to placate her.  Whatever my reasons are, she accepts them with a nod of her head and motions me off to one side.  The little hellcat wants to storm the castle first.  Knew there was a reason I love her so damn much.  "Ladies first."  Her teeth show perfect fluoride white in the midnight darkness and she pulls a truncheon baton out of nowhere.  There are of course other reasons to love the girl, she has some fairly outré skills hidden up her sleeve.

Grinning like a maniac at Christmas she smashes through the window and rolls catlike to her haunches.  I jump in behind her and fire once at the bare light bulb in the center of the ceiling plunging the room into darkness.  Through the glories of my night vision I can make out eleven men lounging around the room in various sartorial states.  Two of them who were most likely lounging on the bed asleep before our grand entrance aren't wearing anything but a pair of moth-eaten tightie whities and I have to stifle the urge not to run over and cover Max's eyes.

"I thought you said there were twelve of these morons?"

"What I'm not perfect you know."  Maybe it's Maxie calling them morons that finally does it, but they all snap out of their torpid state of shock and start scrabbling for guns and knives of all sorts.  I incapacitate the nearest man with a bullet to the wrist and another to the leg before holstering the gun again and diving into the fight with fists and feet.

In a blur of motion Max surges forward and takes out two men twice her size with a well placed uppercut and a brutal kick to the kneecap, one snapped jaw and one broken leg.  I bury my left fist into the soft flesh of the stomach of the rather overweight man behind me.  Using his own momentum as his head jerks downward I sweep my right leg out and knock both of his feet out from under him.  His own weight does the rest, carrying him to the floor and knocking him out cold.  I look up in time to see Max dancing out of reach of the six inch blade of a dagger.  She catches my eye from across the room and winks wickedly at me.  In a well choreographed movement she leaps through the air and I run to catch her, swinging her body around so that her feet smash full force into the back of the man's head.  Daintily she catches the knife before it has time to hit the ground and she buries it in the forearm of the man who's just run over to take his fallen comrades place.

Trusting her to take care of the remaining to men I run out of the room and head down the hall following the directions that Felipe had sworn on his life were completely accurate.  Bursting through the first door on the left I find a skinny brunette with thick glasses and a permanently worn expression sitting morosely on a cot, her hands cuffed to the radiator behind her.  "Senator McKlellan I presume?"  Fear turns to hope on her washed out face at the sound of her name.

"Are you the rescue party?  If you are I hope to hell you brought reinforcements."  Reaching behind her I take the chains in both my hands and yank them apart.  Before she has time to question my amazing feat of athletics the sounds of running footsteps brings the glock back out of its holster and into my hands.  The light, even footsteps have to belong to Max so I untense and pull the senator to her feet, preparing to make a break for the next hostage.

"Felipe…bastard…there are more men…in basement, coming upstairs now…too many of them."  I know instinctively not to question Max's definition of too many; she's willing to take on an army with one hand tied behind her back.  Without warning I toss the senator to my shoulder, fireman style and make a beeline for the staircase.  The reassuring sound of Max's footsteps echo behind me as I pound down the staircase.  Using the senator's feet as a battering ram I smash into the first two of the guards before spinning around and clipping the other two in uncomfortable places.  I'd promised Max that I wouldn't kill them but it's debatable which fate is worse.

The fresh night air meets my exertion flushed face like a blessed relief.  I turn around and toss Max a small cellophane wrapped package.  As I cover a little more distance with my body sized burden, Max drops in a crouch next to the jeep parked in front of the door and smacks the thumb sized sticker onto the bottom of the car.  Rising steadily to her feet she joins me in carrying our prize off towards the city.


	14. The Life and Times of Harker Hayes

Senator McKlellan watches me wearily like an animal sensing a predator.  I don't blame her really, she saw us fight off her kidnappers at the gang's hideout and she has to know what we are.  She's picking grey fuzzies off the cheap comforter on my bed and my enhanced vision can pick up the small tremors of fear shaking her hands.  A sense of mute fascinations slips over me as I watch her because I haven't seen fear like that up close for a long time.  Cindy has to much pride to get scared, Sketchy is too dumb to know he should be afraid, and Normal is too pig-headed stubborn.  As for the rest of us we learned a long time ago not to show our feelings.  Feeling can be used against you, associations can be turned to the advantage of the enemy.

"You are one of those people aren't you?  You and the boy?"  The senator wins bonus points for not sounding disgusted when she says the words "those people", instead she looks up at me with large hazel eyes with an expression of intense curiosity.  As long as she doesn't want to dissect me, I'm fine with curiosity.  "You work for Heather don't you?  It's okay to tell me, the two of us have been good friends since our junior senate days and she won't mind if I know."  That's a shock, the idea of Senator Burnhart having friends.  The mousy looking woman before me seems harmless enough and so I decide to tell her half the truth.

"Senator Burnhart was instrumental in passing the Transgenic Freedom and Protection Acts through congress.  As a show of gratitude myself and my associate run certain politically sensitive errands for her."  She laughs lightly in a tired kind of way.

"Well in an instable world like this one I'd certainly say that it's wise to have the protection of such a powerful political ally.  In fact I'm sure a similar arrangement could be reached between…"  The cell phone in my cargo pocket rang obnoxiously saving me from having to reply to the deceptively shy looking woman in front of me.  The last thing I want to do right now is get myself tangled up with another slimy politician but I'm not sure whether I might need the extra help someday.

"Talk to me."

"I need you to return to Seattle immediately Max."  Her voice is terse, and for the first time in our short acquaintance she doesn't even identify herself on the phone, something is very wrong.  "My personal security has been compromised, and," her breath hitches in her throat and if I didn't know better I'd think that she was crying.  "They've taken my daughter, they've kidnapped Elizabeth."  There is no need to ask who's taken her daughter, even a senator doesn't have that many enemies willing to kidnap people.  The only question now, is why would the gang pull of such a risky move.  If they wanted the senator to stop nosing into their affairs they could have simply shot her, they certainly had the opportunity to do so if they'd managed to break into her house.  Something doesn't feel right about this and its prickling at my sixth senses.

"One of us needs to stay behind to monitor the movements of the cult.  Alec's will remain here for now and I'll return with Senator McKlellan to Seattle."  She makes a noise of agreement in the phone and doesn't even question me about our success at recovering the other hostages.  I'm still holding the phone to my ear long after the dial tone signals the end of our connection.

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Harker Hayes looks back at me indignantly before tossing her shoulder length chestnut hair over her left shoulder and turning her head back to the tv.  I would really like to kill the writers of self help books for parents.  There isn't a single teenager I know that classifies as well adjusted or well balanced.  Self help books only make our parents feel inadequate about themselves, a feeling which they in turn take out on us.  God even knows what my mother's read now, but she's suddenly got it into her head that I don't socialize enough with my peers.  Unfortunately for me, that also means that she wants me to pal around with the sons and daughters of her social peers.  Hence the enforced sleep over with the blond debutante from hell.

What kind of name is Harker anyway?  Elizabeth may be an old fashioned name, but only an aging Californian socialite would name their daughter Harker.  The vapid little thing doesn't even have any books or a computer, instead I'm forced to sit here watching Best Music Videos of All Time.  They haven't made a new music video since the pulse so it rather limits the playing field I guess, but I'd offered my opinion on the relative tastelessness of turn of the century boy bands and Harker had thrown a hissy fit.  The only bright spot I could see was that the little sod had finally shut her mouth.  One more word about her dreamy boyfriend Todd and I would have puked up right on her pastel pink carpet.

The incessant ringing of Harker's personal phone line finally breaks the monotonous stream of music videos and commercials.  "Hello?"  A sudden increase in the throatiness of  her voice means that she's probably expecting a call from Todd.  If Todd thinks that voice is real then cute or not, he's extremely dim witted as well.  "What!  Really?  Oh Todd that would be just fabulous.  No my parents are shut off in the South wing of the house trying out their new Yoga Mantra's and the maid's definitely gone to bed for the evening.  I'll see you in five minutes.  Okay sugar see you soon."  The night just keeps getting better and better.  If I'm forced to watch little miss Harker snog with her boyfriend I'll walk out of here and stay in a hotel for the night.

Beaming on me with an expression that indicates that my unfortunate tastes in music have been forgiven Harker coyly puts her finger to her lips to indicate silence and motions me out the door.  Apparently being a professional debutante has some perks because she manages to creep down the stairs in her stiletto heels in perfect silence.  We stand camped out by the back door for a few minutes until a small knock thuds out.  In her immense excitement over seeing Todd, Harker punches the security code into the pad beside the door and yanks it open without even looking outside first.  Despite my sarcastic and jaded outlook on life, even I let out a little shriek of shock when a half dozen armed latin men come storming through the door instead of the homogoneously whitebread boyfriend.

Just earlier today I'd increased the security on my mother's mansion with a little of my own creative computer work.  I know that she's taking on the cult that killed my father right now.  Inherent to that I know the danger that she's probably in at the moment.  What I seem to have failed to calculate is the possible dangers to my own life.


	15. Two if By Land

Hey guys!  Hope that you're still enjoying the story, and that it hasn't gotten too confusing.  To clear things up, the cut scene at the end of the last chapter were Elizabeth, the daughter's, last moments before her kidnapping.  I will say that the beginning to this next chapter is not gratuitous fluff, I honestly swear on my author's pen that it has a deeply intrinsic purpose to the story which some of you, most likely MM who seems to be always three steps ahead of me, will figure out.  Let's just say if everything goes as planned the ending to this installment of the never ending story will be EVILLLLL.  *Insert evil laugh here*.  

Now for the edification of Glitterina one of my favoritest readers and reviewers, and also anyone else who has become confused (I admit it I ramble): 1. Max and Alec are working for the senator because she is helping to pass a number of acts through congress that will protect the rights of transgenics, let's say she's bribing them to be guns for hire.  2. They will make it back to Seattle very soon, at least Max will and you will soon have a reunion with many of the characters which you are missing, because frankly I miss them too.  3. And now for no reason whatsoever other than making me laugh:  Harker Hayes is the daughter of Felicia Banks and Rutherford Hayes, no relation to Rutherford B. Hayes, who donates heavily from the fortune he made from inventing air projectile weapons to the cause of legalizing marijuana.  As previously stated he and his wife are aging Californian hippies who enjoy sexy forms of yoga, enough said.  To add to the injustice of actually naming the poor girl Harker (hippies…too much acid), the parents are very wrapped up in themselves and while they give their daughter everything material that she could want I'd say that Harker suffers from a lack of parental love and affection in her life.  The Hayes are very large supporters to the campaign fund of none other than Senator Burnhart.  This is in part because the senator is willing to back a number of crazy left wing pieces of legislation such as the legalization of marijuana and the freedom of the transgenics.  Senator Burnhart is a workaholic since the death of her dear husband and neglects her only daughter Elizabeth, she also, like all mothers, reads those god awful self help books that tell you how to raise your children to be better people (personal experience????).  Senator Burnhart decides that her daughter Elizabeth is turning into an antisocial computer hacker, which if Elizabeth is honest with herself she really is.  Senator Burnhart therefore has her secretary call the Hayes' secretary and arrange a sleepover for Harker and Elizabeth.  Todd, boyfriend to Harker, was not harmed during the writing of this story.  In a fit of kindness, the  gang tied him up and left him in Harker's front lawn.  Perhaps they figured that being Harker's boyfriend was torture enough.  And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Read on and please enjoy.

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_Something had felt off since we rescued the little mousy senator.  It started with a song running through my head insistently all day and then shifted to a niggling feeling at the back of my stomach.  I'd felt an odd prickling on my back as I talked to Burnhart on the phone and by the time I'd gone to tell Alec that I was going back to Seattle to look for clues in the kidnapping it had progressed to an all over itch that nearly had me tearing at my skin.  Alec wasn't in our room, he'd left a note saying that he was running down to the dingy bar across the street to see if he could knock more information out of the patrons.  When I stopped in the doorway to scratch my back against the doorjamb a slow warmth started to spread over my cheeks and forehead and down my arms._

_Sweat covered my arm_s_ in small rivulets by the time I got to the bar, but something happened so that I no longer cared.  My enhanced senses picked up his scent the minute I entered the dim, noisy room and overwhelmed the rest of my thoughts.  My mate finds me.  His head tilts down and he captures my lips with his, powerfully and consumingly.  The little bit of rational thought left between us prompts him to scoop me up into his arms and sprint back to the small hotel room.  I think the door is half knocked off its hinges when he slams it shut, but honestly who cares._

_Have you ever been delirious with fever, and had that feeling that you didn't know which way was up?  This is more intense, fills you from the inside out and erases your sense of self leaving one person made of the two of you.  It is blood and sweat and the deepest kind of lust there is.  And when it is over there is something new there, something new inside of me._

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"That was different."  Her voice is throatier than usual and the base tones reverberate down my spine.

"Is that different as in, boy that plate of sardines on chocolate cake was different, or mind blowing, amazing, x-rated, pornography worthy different?"

"If you give me an encore I might just say the last option."  She's glowing in a happy kind of way as she lies curled up in the crook of my shoulder.  I know, or think I know the reason for her all encompassing happiness.  It's a hundred to one odds that she's never gone into heat around her own kind before.  Her next statement confirms my guess.  "I've never had the urges just end after I've done it, well you  know.  Is it something with the DNA?"  She looks at me with a small hopeful expression, and I feel the compulsion for one of the first times in my life to tell the utter and honest truth.

"It is different when you are with your own kind.  With a human, I guess the other person doesn't experience the same feelings as we do, they can't understand what it's like."  Her smile wavers a bit and I kiss her eyelids and nose.  "But even with another transgenic I've never felt this before.  You are in every way perfect, special, and the only one in all the world that I will want until the day I die."  I'm not good with words and neither is she, and so she replies with a simple kiss.

When the insistent beeping of the tracking monitor disturbs us a few minutes later, I simply kiss her one last time and throw on some clothes before heading out the door.  My car is packed and ready to go, and if indeed I do come back to the hotel tonight I know that she'll already be gone.  I can't say goodbye though and neither can she, we'll see each other soon enough and that's all that matters.

I follow the sinister looking black jeep at a discrete distance until it finally parks at a shabby looking airfield.  Halting a few hundred yards away  in the cover of woods, I leave the car and stalk the rest of the way to the field on foot.  Around a dozen planes of various sizes stand parked in neat rows.  The jeep stops near an old Cessna that looks like it's been through a few world wars and lived to tell about it.  One of the cult members, the tallest one by my reckoning, hops out of the drivers seat and walks into the controllers office.

In the meantime, my enhanced hearing pricks at the sound of two more jeeps driving up the remote road and I duck further into the woods.  Silently I marvel at the lack of overall creativity shown by the gang, black Armani suits, black sunglasses, and now three black jeeps, now if Bruce Willis came jumping out of the woods toting a machine gun the image would be complete.

A contingent of fifteen heavily armed gang members comes pouring out giving the scary black vehicles an aura of clown car.  Maybe they resorted to sitting on each others' laps when things got too crowded.  Now comes what I can only assume are the hostages with black sacks over their heads; one extremely tall man that has to be Senator Bradley, a slightly shorter man in evening wear that is my dear friend Logan, and a very petite girl in pajamas who has to be my own Senator Burnhart's daughter.  

I don't honestly care that much about Bradley or even Logan, but I can tell from the baby fat on the girl's half shaped curves that she is quite young and for some reason her youth bothers me deeply in this situation.  Unfortunately, I can't do anything about rescuing her or any of the others at the moment.  There are too many well-armed men in too open a space.  I might be a prodigal son of Manticore, but I still paid attention in my classes and I know it won't do the hostages any good if I get my ass shot in some futile rescue attempt.  No, my only option is to try to follow the plane somehow and then make my move when the odds look better.

A half an hour later the tall man walks back out of the office and his men give him the thumbs up for the pre-flight checks.  I've managed to stick another tracking device to the plane through the use of the handy Small Projectile Object Air Launching Device that Dix had cooked up for me.  The SPOALD is small enough to fit in my pocket and ran on air compression, and Dix will only be mildly apoplectically pissed at me when he finds out that I stuck chewing gum in his new toy.  I had to make the damn receptor stick somehow.

I watch the plane taxi down the dirt runway and then disappear into the blue sky while simultaneously watching it bleep and ping on the tracking receiver.  Soon I'll have a location, now all I need is some damned transportation to get me there.  If god has a sense of humor I would grow wings right about now.


	16. L'Hostess de Pain

The landing strip building is quite large really, but cluttered with so much junk that I immediately feel claustrophobic. Boxes, desks, and model airplanes cover the floor across a quarter of the room and at the very back is an ancient lunch counter. Visually I mark five people in the room, four largish squat men on bar stools in front of the lunch counter and a larger and squatter woman holding a coffeepot in front of them. The conversation stops when I walk in and all five heads turn to stare avidly at me. 

  
"Kin 'ah help you son?" Texan I think, fifty five years old, two hundred and fory five pounds, and a hairnet holding back her wispy brown and grey hair, not a danger unless she decides to sit on me.

   
"Ma'am." I resist the urge to tip an imaginary hat at her. "I need to talk to someone about renting a plane, ma'am." I can afford to be nice to the lunch lady, if I'm lucky I'll only have to bully one person today. A flood of motherly concern fills her face and she beams at me, call an older woman ma'am and you get her everlasting respect. 

  
"Well ain't you jest the darlin'est thing. Y'all will be wanting to talk to Ernie in the back office." She points the coffee pot like a dueling poniard towards a battered steel door recessed into the battered cinderblock walls. I nod my head in thanks and watch her pat her hairnet as I give her my patented three alarm smile, tailored for mothers, grandmothers, and tax lawyers. This next game will be played a little differently. 

Walking around the corner of the hall, I make sure that all of the coffee drinkers have gone back to their manly gossip before I take a firm grip on the door handle and yank it open, stopping it just before it bashes into the wall. The man behind the desk looks up in deep alarm and then calms when he sees that its me, I suspect that he was afraid that one of the gang members had been dissatisfied with the service and come back to rip him up. He looks like the fortysomething adventurer type with overgrown sandy brown hair, slightly bulging muscles, and a deeply tanned, rugged face. The slight sneer on his face as he looks me up and down tells me that I've been judged and found to be unworthy of respect or much interest. 

"Can I help you son?" Unlike the lunch lady, his drawl sounds affected. 

"Well first of all I need to hire a plane." He quirks his eyebrows at this. 

"They don't come cheap sonny, unless y'all wanted a model airplane, and then maybe Lenny in the shop can help set you up." I didn't expect cooperation but this is ridiculous. Time to step up the plan, blurring my hand out I snatch the letter opener off his desk and start cleaning my nails with it. 

"I said, I want to hire a plane. A real plane, with wings and engines, that flies through the air kind of like a bird but working on different aerodynamic principles. Working on a landingstrip I'll assume you know the kind that I'm talking about." He looks mortally offended, but also somewhat at a loss to explain how his letter opener suddenly ended up in my hand. I cut him off before he can speak again. "There are also a few other things that I need to know from you, and I'm fairly certain that they're going to be harder for you to deal with than simply hiring out a plane. See, a very special friend of mine has this sweet little daughter who happens to have just flown out of this airport. I need you to tell me where that plane that just left was going." 

A sly glint creeps into his eyes and his lips widen giving him a faintly amphibian expression. "Wha sure sonny that there plane was headed to Bluebell Kentucky.  If y'all really want to hire a plane out to Kentucky then I'm sure that we can work something out."  Two steps and my hand sweeps out, grabbing him around the neck and pulling him out of his chair.  In a grip that might as well be iron I pin him by the neck to the wall.

"If that plane was going to Kentucky then I'm the Queen of England."

"But, but."  His voice chokes out gratingly and I lift him fractionally higher so that his feet are kicking slightly in the air.  Keeping my vice grip on his neck I peel him away from the wall and toss him like a ragdoll onto his desk. Throwing him across the room and into a wall might have been more personally satisfying, but I didn't want to alarm the nice lunch lady. I jump effortlessly onto the desk so that my feet land straddling his midsection, I brace one of my feet against his larynx and ask the question again. "Where was the plane going? If you like doing things like swallowing and breathing I recommend you take this opportunity to answer." He summons up his dwindling bravado and spits at my face. 

"Little boy like you hasn't got the courage to squeeze." Moving faster than the human eye can follow, my hand darts out and belts him across the face. Keeping a medium pressure on his neck, I lean over him until my mouth is only a foot or so from his ear. 

"Do you know what I am?" His skin blanches deeply, and he struggles ineffectually under the pressure of my foot. "Freak." I increase the weight on his neck until he stops trying to wrench free. "Now that isn't a kind thing to call me, personally I prefer the term genetically empowered, but if you've got your heart set on calling me a freak then I guess I'll have to make do. See, you aren't acting very smart here. If you knew what I was then it's pretty silly telling me I haven't got the nerve to kill a scumbag like you. I've killed innocent boys and girls before, what makes you think that doing in a jerk like you would even make me blink?" 

"If I tell you where the plane's going Pardidos will kill me himself." All pretense at a Texas accent is gone now. "I'll make it messier, I have skills that the inquisition would have found too harsh." Advanced Physiological Reactions courses tell me that his rapidly blinking eyelids, dry lips, and thready pulse mean that he's about to crack. Whether it means that he'll tell me what I need to know, or that I'm pushing to hard on his windpipe and he's about to pass out. 

"How do I know you won't just kill me after I've told you?" A ghost of a smile turns up my lips. 

"Animals don't lie." He shakes his head in hesitation one more time but I know that I've already won. 

"Go down to the airfield, there's an old grey cessna at the end of the row on the left. There'll be a guy asleep in the cockpit, his name is Loco Erick, tell Loco Erick that you want to go to Cano Pelour. Don't worry about money, he'll do this one for free.

  
Loco Erick is dressed in carefully pressed chinos and a worn blue button down shirt, his rolled up sleeves the only concession to the stifling heat in the Cockpit. Grey salt and peppers his dark hair and the wrinkles gouged out between his eyebrows are outlined in rivulets of sweat.  "Can I help you son?" He sounds like an old cowboy ought to, like John Wayne in The Quiet Man. 

"Yes sir, I need a pilot to fly me out to Cano Pelour." I sense an infinitesimal tightening in his muscles at the name of the island.

"Not exactly a prime vacation spot, and I would have figured you for being too Teutonic for one of Pardidos's boys."  I do him the service of looking him directly back in the eyes.

"I'm an attaché to the office of Senator Burnhart.  The Senator has been working for years to bring down the gang and yesterday they kidnapped her daughter.  On a more personal note I served in the military a while back and I was sent in after the gang myself.  I lost a few good team members to the Uncle's gang and honestly I hold a grudge for it.  What I'm planning is dangerous and I'll understand if you don't want to have anything to do with flying me out there."  A smile lights up his face.

"In the military huh?  Well I personally can't stomach those evil sons of a, having a little girl in their hands.  Besides, we all could use a bit of danger in our lives don't ya think?"


	17. Terminal Motion

"Can I get you something to drink miss?" I shake my head miserably at the flight attendant and turn to press my forehead against the cool glass of the airplane's window. Senator McKlellan insisted on upgrading both of us to first class seats and I will admit to being impressed by all of the luxury. Unfortunately all of the seatwarmers and cold drinks in the world can't make up for the rocky turbulence of this plane. At this moment I would gladly sell me soul for a Dramamine pill. 

  
"Can I offer you a Dramamine Miss Guevara?" A distinguished gray haired gentleman stands over me holding out a foil packed pill which I unceremoniously snatch and swallow dry. Senator McKlellan wrinkles her eyebrows at me in question, unlike her companion she knows what I am and that I don't ever get sick. I shrug softly at her and murmur my thanks to the old guy. 

The gray haired man is some kind of economic genius who did a lot of work on Capitol Hill, and the moment he saw Ms. McKlellan board the plane he'd been all chit chat and solicitous questions. Now that I have his Dramamine I wish that he'd go away. Being in touch with current events he new that McKlellan had been listed as missing after the society dinner kidnapping. When he'd asked her about it, the Senator had laughed and told him that the news had been mistaken. The old guy is too smart to buy her story though, so he keeps tossing little questions and hints at her. At this moment I'm just hoping that he won't catch on to the fact that I rescued her and put two and two together. One of the first things you learn in Tactical Maneuvers is to never pick a fight on an aircraft that you don't know how to fly. 

 "Please take your seats and fasten your belts. Please make sure that all trays are in an upright position. This is the captain speaking and we will be landing in ten minutes." The mousy brown senator takes her seat next to me again and starts fussing with her seat belt. I very nearly wretch as her elbow catches me in the ribs and I endure the last ten minutes of the flight with her apologizing to me. I swear to whatever supreme beings are up there that I'm never eating airplane food ever again. Grimacing, I bite the edges of my cheeks as the plane bounces to a stop at the end of the runway. 

The grey haired man is at our side again once we come to a full stop, jostling down the carry-on luggage that I could have carried much more efficiently. I could kiss the ground as we step off the exit ramp, but I don't have time. Jonathan or whatever Burnhart's babyfaced blond haired secretary's name is, is waiting at the entrance to the airport lobby with a gleamingly clean Jeep SUV Arroya that looks a good bit like the one Logan used to drive. 

The gray haired gentleman hugs my rescued hostage goodbye and politely shakes my hand. "Best to remember the Dramamine next time, aye dearie?" I smile contritely and hoist my luggage at Jonathan who's packing our things away in the trunk. As soon as the old man is out of hearing range Jonathan starts in on our marching orders. "I'm to take both of you to the senator immediately, it that is alright with you Ms. McKlellan." He doesn't even ask my opinion on the subject. I may be rethinking this whole "lapdog to the lady in power gig" if I don't start getting some respect. 

 Breaking form with her impeccable manners, Burnhart is waiting in the foyer of her mansion for us, rather than having us escorted into her office. Her hands are clenched tightly into fists and she looks very much like she might like to punch the wall right now. I mostly forgive her for assuming I'm at her beck and call, if I had a kidnapped daughter I wouldn't be minding social niceties either. I'd just find the responsible people and rip them apart limb from lung. 

The three of us stand staring at each other for a moment. "Oh god Heather I'm so sorry." The mousy senator holds out her hands to Burnhart and squeezes them until the suspicious dampness passes from her eyes. 

"Would both of you please join me in my office?" I'm not as impressed by the expensiveness of the place anymore. I've lived with people trying to hunt me down and kill me, or put me in a cage my whole life, but I don't have any choice in the matter. I'm special, I was born special and it will remain a permanent state. The rest of these people though, the Senator's and Logan, they chose to make themselves different. I don't think it's worth it. The normal life is highly underrated, because all the wealth in the world isn't worth losing your husband or child. 

In her concise way, Burnhart sums up the kidnapping and gives me an appointment book that has addresses and times during which I can interview the friends that her kid was staying with, and the police detective in charge of the investigation. Frankly I think it's a waste of time. Our best shot of catching the gang is by letting Alec track their movements and I ought to be out in the middle of nowhere helping him rather than back in Seattle chasing a cold trail. I rise from my seat and head for the door, turning as I reach the exit. "I will find her." She nods her head solidly. 

"I know you will."   


	18. A Friend in Need

_The rain is falling on me now, cold and damp and ennervating.  I'm holding his hand in mine and realizing that I never before bothered comparing my hand to his.  It's comfortingly larger, his hand that is, but the rain is making it cold and clammy, leaching its warmth away.  I lay his hand on my stomach again but he doesn't stir.  Eventually the warmth of my body will give his the illusion of life._

_The rain is falling on me now, icy, wet, and chilling.  People are tugging at my arms and raising me up off the ground.  The sodden earth falls away from me and the air surrounds me like a living thing. They bear my body away.  The rain falls on._

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"Boo!"  She wraps her arms around me and squeezes me so tightly that even my enhanced lungs are on the point of collapse.  "Hey Fool, get us all a pitcher to celebrate the return of my girl."  I finally manage to extricate myself from the hug without hurting her and I back up a pace to smile at her.  

"You do realize that I've only been gone for a week?"  She shakes her head until her hair wobbles at me.  

"Girl you realize I hardly never see you no more. Besides any excuse to make my fool boy pay for a pitcher.  So hit me up, what you been doin with yourself?"  The worn seats cradle my thighs like an old friend and I realize just how long it has been since I've been able to go out for a beer with my friends.  

"Well you know me, Seattle is just so damn rainy this time of year I had to take myself off to California."  She raises a perfectly plucked eyebrow at me.  

"For real? You jerking me around Boo."  

"No seriously first I went to the party from hell.  You would have been proud of me, got all done up in a girly dress, put up my hair, got stabbed for all my trouble.  Then Logan got kidnapped by Brazilian gang members along with some tiny little senator lady and this guy that might be a bad guy but might not be a bad guy and might have been kidnapped too, and then we followed them out to California to an old motel, but there were too many of them and they ambushed us so we only had time to rescue the lady senator but we managed to put a homing patch on them like the one we stole from Lela so Alec is tracking them now and I haven't heard back from him yet and I'm kind of worried.  Oh and the Senator that I've been working for because she's the one making all of these laws in Congress to help us, her daughter was kidnapped and now I'm trying to find her."  She's hugging me again by the end of the tirade and I remember how good it feels to have a best friend to lean on.  

Sketchy presses a cold and only slightly spilt beer mug into my hands and pats me clumsily on the head.  "You checked in at TC yet to see if yo' boy's called command?"  I shake my head lightly.

"I've been calling every couple of hours all day."

"You know how that boy is, I'm sure he's just haven a good ol' time playing super spy and all up in forgettin to be responsible."  Cindy puts forth an excellent point, it would be just like Alec to go all commando and forget that I'm in Seattle worrying about him.  If I weren't the leader I would so be out there parachuting through volcanoes and kicking ak 47's out of the bad guys hands.  Being in charge really sucks.  

The beer is cold in my hands and it feels good in the sweaty heat of the bar.  I lift the glass to my forehead so that the moisture beads up on my temple and cools me off.  The close proximity of the smell of beer suddenly makes my stomach begin to roll again.  Slamming the glass down on the table I push and shove my way to the bathroom and lock myself in one of the less filthy stalls.  About halfway through tossing the contents of my stomach I feel Cindy's hands at the back of my neck lifting my hair out of the way.  

"What's wrong Boo?"  I roll back and chance sitting on the floor.  

"I just don't know, it's been freakin me out the past couple of days though. I'm just, I'm just scared that it's something else that Manticore fucked up with my DNA ya know?  I mean they crossed enough wires as it is, I'm surprised that my head doesn't spin around like in the exorcist.  This once when I found some of my family, my sister Brin had this real bad disease called progeria.  It all has to do with the ends of our chromosomes, they screwed up and made them too short in her and bam she gets some weird aging disease.  I'm worried that its just another problem and I really can't be sick right now, I've got so many freaking people to take care of, and to lead."  She pulls me into a hug and pats my hair soothingly.

"Damn girl, don't you go borrowing trouble yo' got enough of that on your own.  What we gonna do right now is get down to TC and have Kate check you ever good.  Then we do any worrying that we got to."  She's right of course, I'm being really ridiculous worrying about being sick instead of doing something about it.

"You don't have to come with me you know.  I know that they made the protestors leave the city walls and stuff but there's still wack jobs out there that won't let the thing go."  I'm hoping selfishly that she'll be as stubborn as I know she is and decide to come anyway.

"Forget it Boo.  You get your jacket on and we gonna get this bitch over with together."

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Hey guys!  Sorry it's taken me so long to update but I've got a new boyfriend, a huge load of classes, and midterms out the wazoo.  Is anybody still reading this?  I hope a few people are, if I manage to get some work done on this the ending should be a nail biter.  Peace ma amis.

In the next exciting chapters:  Alec lands on the island of the damned, Max finds out what's wrong with her funky self, and Elizabeth Burnhart is reunited with the darling Harker, or is she????  (Hint, hint, this is a rather big clue, I hadn't intended on making Harker into a real character but so many people were wondering about her that the most delicious plot twist came to me one day).


	19. Smoke and Mirrors

Loco Erick is lounging in the cockpit like a king in his domain, his feet propped up on the dash and his head lolling lazily to one side.  I've just woken up from a two hour power nap propped against the empty cargo nets in the back of the plane.  Sometimes it comes in handy being trained to sleep anywhere.  Erick doesn't stir as I sit down with a creak in the copilot's seat beside him.  Judging by the maps spread out on the floor beside me we'll be in Cano Pelour in just over three hours.  As I bend over to study the maps more closely a roughly calloused hand clamps down on the back of my neck and shoves the collar of my leather jacket back.

"Military huh?  Shame on you son, I thought you were supposed to have the reflexes of a cat."  Moving at half the speed which I'm capable of I ease back and pull him away from my exposed neck.

"One of the first rules I learned was to never hurt my pilot if I didn't know how to fly the plane."  He chuckles at this with a deep soothing sound.  "So what now?  We both know that I could kill you before you have time to blink, but I really kind of like you and I'm a good deal rusty at flying this lady."  I turn to look at him and we both sit for a few moments sizing the other man up.

"You telling the truth about why you wanted to go to the island?"  Erick's voice is deadly serious and I get the feeling that he'll know with some sort of sixth sense whether or not I'm lying to him.

"Yeah, I really do work for Senator Burnhart.  Her daughter really was kidnapped.  And I sure as hell am looking to get revenge for the three members of my unit that those bastards slaughtered."  He scans my face slowly before nodding.

"Well then, that's okay I guess.  I'm thinking it's time for us to talk about strategy then.  Do you have any plans of the compound on the island or any ideas of what kind of armaments they've got?"  My brow furrows roughly.

"What you're gonna help me?"  He gives me an exasperated shake of the head.

"Well of course I'm gonna help you son.  You ain't the only ex-military man whose unit got cut up by those sons-a-guns."  Well that certainly explains his willingness to risk flying a stranger into a heavily armed island.

"I got some idea of the layout from my first tour of duty on the island, but that's about it.  We'll both be going into this blind if you're still up for it."  He chuckles deeply again.

"Frankly speakin son, I ain't got no family, no girlfriend, and damn few causes to fight for anymore.  Old Loco Erick is at your service.  

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"Miss Burnhart, your mother would be so disappointed in your behavior.  A young lady does not attempt to bite a man, a nice man who was only trying to remove her restraints."  I dislike the old man immediately, which is an odd thing to say because he's a pretty harmless looking old guy.  His accent is Brazilian I think and his skin is as weathered as an old apple.  It's his eyes that repel me because they look as cold and calculating as a tax lawyers.

"I'm sure that my mother is quite disappointed enough in me already, but then I think that would be your fault sir.  You see, when I was a very young girl my father went out to a little pacific island to hunt down a cult who had murdered a bunch of people and then he never returned.  I guess you wouldn't know anything about that though would you sir?"  My tone was meant to be ironic and cutting but the old man isn't taking any offense at it.  On the contrary, my standing up to him seems to be vastly amusing to him.

"You have spunk Miss Burnhart, I like that in a girl, even if she has no manners.  I'm afraid the accomadations here aren't much to look at, but I trust that in time you will make yourself comfortable."  The cold fear that I'm sure that statement was meant to inspire grips my stomach tightly.  How long does he intend me to stay here?  I was assuming that this was going to be a, be killed or manage to escape situation, it hasn't occurred to be that he might want to keep me here for any reason.  The small flame of hope also lights up in my head, that if he plans on keeping me here for some time, that maybe my father could still be alive and held prisoner here.

Two of the old man's beefy henchmen grab me by the arms again, although admittedly they are a good bit more cautious about it this time now that their compatriot is bleeding from the bite marks on his arm.  "I regret to inform you that spunk is not all that is required in life though Miss Burnhart.  You will also find that money and power are tools which are not to be underrated, and you are currently facing someone with a great deal of both."  Oh goody, not only was this guy going to have his goons drag me around by the arms, but he was also going to go all long-winded and smug on me too.

The thugs haul me along a vast number of tiled corridors and up and down innumerable flights of stairs before I'm propelled through a series of security doors and into a tiny and narrow hall filled with metal and small windowed cubicles.  A third henchman yanks open one of the doors on my right and shoves me inside so that I fall to my knees.  A small shriek beside me causes me to start and whirl around.  The screech is not as shocking as the face that greets me when I turn.

"Harker?" 


	20. Will the Real Harker Please Raise Her Ha...

"Harker?"  The girl in front of me is undeniably the ditzy little blond whose mansion I was kidnapped from.  What I don't understand is the sudden change that's come over her.  Harker crouches huddling against the wall with her arms wrapping around her thin knees, her once expensive tan looks pale and dingy and her large blue eyes are rimmed by dark circles.  I don't understand it, if the gang kidnapped Harker on the same night that they kidnapped me, then why weren't we transported together?  Besides that, two days can not have wrought such a physical change so quickly.  "Harker what happened to you?  It's Elizabeth, don't you remember me?  I was at your house just a few days ago."  The words don't seem to get through to her, and Harker's eyes drop back to the floor as she mentally retreats farther from us.

"Actually Miss Burnhart the young lady you had the misfortune of acquaintanceship with is not Harker Hayes, not the real Harker at least.  Unfortunately, this Harker and the one you met both share an unfortunate lack of true character depth.  Poor dear sheltered and pampered Harker didn't last more than a week in my island resort before she began to crack.  We were unable to gather much information from the girl before we were forced to send her clone home in her place.  Lady Luck however has always sat by my side.  The qualities which made Harker such a superb candidate for replacement also ensured that the substitution was not noticed."

"You mean her parents didn't notice her and she was always bouncing around between different boarding schools so no one would notice a change in her personality?"  Clones?  They were making freaking clones out here?  Oh this is so not good, I'm in really big trouble here, big trouble.  Stay calm, just stay calm and see how much you can weasel out of him.

"Yes, Miss Hayes is the quintessential poor little rich girl, ignored by her parents, given any toys she wants but never seen or loved.  It was child's play to kidnap her.  She was headed off for a spring break in the Cote d'Azure and I simply snatched her in transit.  The poor girl was unfortunately too dim to recognize the difference between Spanish and French and she actually climbed right into one of my men's cars without a fuss.  A couple of blood and tissue samples later and all I needed were a few base memories and personality tests to feed the new and better Harker Hayes.  You didn't realize did you?  It never even would have occurred to you that the girl you met was really who she said she was."  I understand the principles behind what they did but now I'm lacking in their motive.  Sure Harker is from a wealthy family, but you can't ransom a girl who for all intents and purposes is still living at home safe and sound.

"Why do this then?  You don't gain anything from having Harker, she's nobody.  Sorry Harker.  I mean, like you said her parents ignore her, so its not even like she could influence their great financial empire."  I don't like the way his eyes are lighting up, don't like it at all.

"You fail to comprehend the depths of my plans little girl.  Do you think this has been a short term operation?  This project began over a decade ago when I bought myself into the good graces of one of the Manticore scientists…"

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"How's she doing?"  True to her word, Original Cindy had dragged me to TC as soon as we left Crash, frog-marching me straight up to Kate's office.  Now I'm feeling bad.  Kate's only other customer is CeCe, big as a house and waiting for a prenatal check-up.  I haven't bothered to check up on CeCe in weeks, and she looks only slightly better than she did kneeling at Biggs's grave.  Around the bulge of her child, the rest of her body has gotten skinnier.  At least some of the grayness is gone from her complexion.  I know the woman standing beside CeCe only slightly; her name is Naia I think, and she volunteered to take CeCe into her apartment after Biggs's death.  She looks reprovingly at me, and I know that she feels I ought to have checked on my friend before this.

"The child is saving her, gives her something to live for.  If she died, it would kill her baby, and so she keeps going."  For an X-5 her features are very plain, her body sparingly curved like a very young girl's, but her eyes carry more depth of pain than most transgenics that I have seen, and in our crowd that is really saying something.  She opens her mouth again as if she wants to say something else, but Kate walks in at that moment.  

"Max!  How are you huh?  I swear you better not have any new bullet holes in you."  Kate descends on me like a mother hen and I feel some of my worry ease.  If anyone can fix this, it's Kate.  She looks at the curious collection of other females standing around us, including the very guarded expression on Naia's face.  "Come on into my office deary and we'll have a look at what ails you."  Cindy smiles in reassurance and turns her attention to exclaiming over CeCe's growing stomach.

I sink down into one of Kate's comfortable office chairs and fold my hands over my offending stomach.  "I've been having these stomach pains Kate.  They're really awful.  I have nausea and cramping, and I can't hold down any food most of the time.  It just started a week or so ago too."  Kate frowns faintly and massages her forehead with the tips of her fingers.

"I hate to make a judgment based on your complaints.  To be sure of anything I'll have to take some blood and tissue samples, and do a full physical of course.  I think I have a good idea of what it is though, and you're not going to like it."


	21. Looking Over Your Shoulder

Hey guys!  Stories rapidly coming to an end, four maybe five chapters left and we still get to find out what's wrong with Max (although most of you have already guessed), if Bradley is a goodie or a baddie, whether poor dear Elizabeth gets rescued, what in the hell they're up to on that island, and most importantly what all of my ominous little italicized beginning paragraphs are leading up to.  For the two people that asked, Naia actually also appears in chapter 9, for the glory of god go I.  I'm really desperately trying not to cross into the land of a Mary Sue fic, but I also enjoy introducing the characters that pop into my head.  Hope you, _enjoy!_

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"Oh shit." I smack my forhead against the cockpit dash making Loco Erick jump a little. 

  
"Y'all know son, it ain't ever a good idea to scare the man flying the plane." Scared is definitely too strong a word as Erick is still slouching back in his chair with his feet propped up on the console. I bite my tongue to keep from remarking on concerns for my own safety when flying with a guy that isn't even looking out the window. 

"Sorry about that. I just remembered that in all this excitement I forgot to call in to headquarters to give them a progress report." He clucks sagely. 

"Now that ain't no way for a soldier to be acting. Man my CO would have given me hell." I laugh sharply. 

"Tell me about it, I bet your CO wasn't your girlfriend either." 

"Damn boy, your just flirting with all kinds of pain on that one. Go into the cargo space if you want to, tah talk to her." My hands are sweating slighty as I flip open the cell phone cover. Much as I love Maxie, I'm really hoping that someone else picks up the phone. It rings, echoing in the tightly enclosed space. 

"TC secure line please give your pass code and wait to be transferred." I lick my dry lips. 

"Echo 4, Bravo 8, Cove Ops TX494. Patch me through to command please." 

"I'm sorry sir but that code expired yesterday." 

"Damnit Lane patch me through to command." The X-6 on the other end of the line giggles increasing my nerves. 

"Geeze us Alex don't get your underwear in a twist. Oh wait, you don't wear..." God takes pity on me and the phones clicks as it transfers me over to the command center. 

"This is Dix, speak to me oh truant one." I breathe out the stale air that I've been holding, it isn't Mole or more importantly it isn't Max. 

"Okay right now I'm in a plane on my way to an island in the south pacific called Cano Pelour. I've got the gang tracked out there, and my pilot is gonna help me do some recon while I wait for you to send out some volunteer reinforcements." Laughter travels in echoes across the phone line. 

"Hey man, I think I hear Max coming up the stairs so you might want to make like highwayman and hang up." 

"Give my best to my girl." I flip the cover shut and press the phone to the forehead. It's better that I talk to Maxie once she's cooled down anyway, like when I'm dead.   
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Dix slams the phone down in its cradle and turns to look at me with a suspicious expression of innocence. "Let me guess, that was my missing boyfriend calling and he hung up so he didn't have to get a dose of tough love?" Dix smiles like the cheshire cat, although I'm pretty sure that he doesn't have cat DNA, and shakes his head. 

"No honestly Max, it was just some concerned citizens wondering where they could send their donations to the save the transgenics fund. Although now that you mention it, Alec called in hours ago to give a report, and he said he loves you very much and kisses the ground that you walk upon." Relief floods me and overcomes my annoyance, if he's calling in then he has to have enough body parts and functions left to dial a phone. 

"Where is the little dear? I swear to god if he's drinking mai tais in San Pedro with some little blond number." Mole walks in behind me and clicks his tongue. 

"Shame on you Dix, you know our boy Alec prefers the brunettes. So where is lover boy anyway, I've got a couple of presents for him and Max." Dix clears his throat. 

"He was calling from an airplane, he and some old military salt are following the bad guys to an island out in the south pacific called Cano Pelour." A young X-6 comes running up to Dix and just barely stops in time to avoid smacking into the computer console. He eyes me nervously before giving me a half salute and then turning to whisper something in Dix's ear. Dix's face falls a bit and he sends the kid scurrying back for the other computer bank. 

"It seems that we've hit a small snag in the plan. These small islands don't have any sort of uniform naming system because they've changed hands so many times after the pulse. I'm not finding an island under the name Alec gave us so it either appears on the map as a number or a different name." 

"Excuse me sir, ma'am, but I may have a solution." The woman is my age, an X-5 and looks to frail and blond to be a soldier. Judging from the equipment in her hands she's been drafted into repairing the faulty wiring here in command. 

"So speak up Adain, what's your miracle plan?" I glare reprovingly at Mole. "Please tell us what you know." She rolls her eyes up at Mole before turning back to me. "You see ma'am I was part of a mission to get back some information stolen from Manticore, the cult your looking for had some kind of inside man in the program. Well I mean us soldiers didn't know what they took, but anyway they sent us out to smash up their computers and look for any evidence of the Manticore files. Everything went wrong though, somehow they knew we were coming and they ambushed us. They were really strong too, as strong as us soldiers. Our unit had seperated into two teams, my team made it out okay, but everyone but the CO on the other team was slaughtered. See after the mission they told us we couldn't return for a second attempt because the cultists had packed up and moved off the island; but if they stayed on that island, then our topographer should still remember how to get to the island and how the place is layed out. You should ask her, ask Naia." 

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_I wonder is she's thinking about me right now. We've been apart for too long and I miss everything about her, her smile, her rare laughter, and they way that she pouts when she get angry, an occurence much more frequent than her laughter. For the first time in a long time I'm feeling a little scared for myself. It's one thing when you're rushing into danger head on, but when you have a six hour plane ride to think about it, it starts to wear on you. The last time I left this island, fled with half the number of unit members I started with. We sat in a cargo hold just like this one, just sat there staring at each other. They understood best, Biggs, and Adain, and Naia, they saw the bodies as I carried them out of the jungle. They can't understand it all though, finding two people who have been like family, draped on the ground next to you. I don't understand why they let me live. Maybe it wasn't as fun to kill me because I'd been knocked unconcious before it all began. Maybe this time when I'm awake they'll have a reason to kill me. I don't want to die. Then, as a child, as a soldier it didn't matter very much to me. I have to come back this time though. I have to see her one more time, always have to see her one more time._


	22. The Birds and the Trees

Hello guys!  It's coming down to finals for me so very soon I'll have oodles of time to write, but until then we'll see what I can squeeze in.  Most of you have guessed what's wrong with Max so congrats (if I'm mean she'll just turn out to have a case of stress related ulcers!).  If you read the second paragraph closely you'll get a real big clue as to what's going on.  That's all I'm gonna say.  Thank you everyone for the great reviews.  Peace- SilverRain

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There are four hundred and sixty two tiles on the ceiling. Four hundred and forty seven of those tiles are pale blue, and fifteen of them are pale pea-green. Day two of my captivity and I'm already going stir crazy. Four times some tall burly guy has escorted me into a room with white walls.  Four times a creepy Hispanic guy that some how still seems to remind me of my old high school guidance counselor has grilled me about my family and friends and school.  I want to go home.  I want my mom, and my friend Laine from boarding school, and one of Rose's strawberry rhubarb pies.  Most of all I really want my computer back.  Although at this point I'm so bored that I'd settle for one of Rose's cheesy romance novels.  I'm scared too, as soon as I'd learned to use a computer I had looked up all of the files relating to my father's disappearance.  I've seen what these monsters do to the people that get in their way, and I'm afraid that I might have to start talking soon to save my own life.

The bars on my door rattle and the scarred woman brings my evening meal.  Like so many things on this island, the scarred woman is a mystery.  Her body is muscular in an almost mannish way, and her face is plain and framed by short cropped brown hair.  Her real identifying mark though are the lesions that cut across the visible parts of her body.  Medicine has always been my second love, just behind computers.  If I were to guess I'd say that she has some kind of ectodermal dysplasia, a kind of genetic disease that makes people very vulnerable to the sun.  The mystery is what some girl with a genetic disorder is doing playing housekeeper on the island of the damned.  Come to think of it I've seen a few people here with odd disorders.  Maybe they're the cloning prototypes, Pardidos's early experiments in playing god.  If I'm right and they are early experiments that were botched then I can only wonder where the parent DNA came from.  I start with a little shriek as the sounds of tapping on the window of my cell breaks me out of my reverie.

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A palm frond tickles at my bare shoulder, even despite my revved up body the heat on this island is explosive and the first thing I did on landing was strip off my shirt. "Wow, you sure do got a lot of nasty looking scars on that body young man." I frown and look down at my chest, apparently the scars from the last three times I was shot and especially the time I was stabbed haven't healed completely and are still pretty visible. 

"Those are just a few weeks old, you should see some of the ones that have healed away. I was once nearly gutted in Tehran and that mark lasted for almost four months." Erick just shakes his head at me. 

"Well, I have done my bit and got you here now it's up to you to tell me which way this little parade is going." I raise my eyebrows at him. He's dropped us off right in the middle of the jungle, which is quite good for not being detected but not so great for me finding my way in a mile and a half canopy of trees.  When I'd been here as a teenager I'd been CO and Naia had been in charge of topography so I don't really know where I'm going now.  

I shut my eyes and let my other senses drift. Birds, and wind in the trees over head, running water about a hundred meters to the right, and just faintly the smell of smoke. Seawater can't be drunk so it's logical that the compound is built along the creek, if I follow the water in the direction of the smoky smell then I should find the bad guys. "This way, if we go this way we should find them." 

 "Alrightyo George you lead and I will follow." I scan the terrain for signs of traps or even a familiar rock but the vista stretches out with peaceful regularity. If I weren't so scared right now it would actually be quite enjoyable to be walking out here. Small multicolored birds twitter away in the trees branches over our heads and jewel toned snakes lie inert in places along the path. The green here is bright and verdant and not coated in dust and grime like it is back in Seattle. After a mile or so of walking a new and more ominous sounds join the mix. The sound of men laughing and yelling gets progressively louder and the scent of smoke resolves itself into roasted pig cooking over a spit. Light filters in more clearly as the trees become less densely packed. I hold up my hand and motion for Erick to stop walking. 

"I can see what has to be the compound through the trees up ahead. We were ambushed before we made it there last time I was here. It looks like one large modern building made out of cement blocks, three stories, and two wings. Then all around it are smaller and rougher buildings that look like they house the guards and uh, other criminal guys." 

"Y'all can see all that from here? Damn impressive. So what do we do now? Run in with our two guns a blazin?" Ah the temptation to say yes. Handle the danger before anyone, and particularly Max, can get involved. The oddest sensation has just started up in me and if I didn't know better I'd call it common sense, because something is telling me that I ought to wait for reinforcements. Some sixth sense is telling me not to rush in there alone. 

"We have to wait for my friends to get here, Dix promised me that he'd get reinforcements out here somehow, and it would be a shame if he went and stole an airplane for nothing. For right now I say we do a little surveillance and see if we can find out where they're keeping our hostages." 

"You got it drummer boy, lead on." As silent as only an inhuman killing machine can be I creep forward until I'm nearly at the edge of the tree line. Several large palm fronds are covering me from the bad guy's line of sight, and as much as I hate cold water I've ponied up the courage and gotten down on my stomach in the creek wetted forest floor. The smell of burnt pork is stronger than ever and much to my surprise my stomach lets out a growl reminding me that I haven't eaten in a day and a half. Yeah, definitely better get this over with soon, I need real food and the sooner the better. 

Ten minutes tick by, and then twenty. After two hours and forty three minutes the hunger is eating away at my stomach lining, I have to pee like crazy, and the inactivity has me in a state fit for psy-ops. How I ever did this as a child is beyond me. Never underestimate the things you're willing to do when the alternative is being cut up like a frog in a lab. A small splash sounds beside me as boredom finally drives Erick to shinny down in the muddy water beside me. 

"Light'll be falling soon, and these yahoos will all be tuckin into bed. I say if you ain't got paged by your buddies by then that you and me try gettin into the compound and doin a little in depth recon." For the hundreth time I check my silent pager and wonder where the heck Dix's so called reinforcements are. I only had a three hour head start so they should have been here nearly an hour ago. My patience has never been my best virtue. In fact if a survey on the subject were taken I'm pretty sure that my best feature would be in the range of something pornographic. Possibly, this says a great deal about my personality flaws. 

"Alright, I can't stand this anymore. It can't do any harm if we just go in and have a look around, just remember we can't engage. Last time I came here they slaughtered us, they're a hell of a lot stronger than they look okay?" 

"I didn't live to the old age of 52 by bein a fool son. Sides I'd like to see you and your friends in action, call it a curiosity." We make it up to the one of the back doors in the compound by the cover of night. I check the entryway carefully for signs of alarm wiring and find nothing so I move aside and let Erick work do some sort of jiggling with a jury-rigged lock pick. The walls are a plain cinderblock painted in sociopathically cheerful yellow.  On the first floor we find very little, a large room that's probably used as a cafeteria or meeting room, some smallish cubicles that look suspiciously like the interrogation rooms that I'd been in during my run in with the Seattle PD, and an echoey stairwell that seems to lead up to the second and third floors.  On the second floor we hit immediate pay dirt with some tiny cells that look like they are used to hold prisoners.  The first two are empty but in the third one a small thin girl lies on the bed staring at the ceiling.  Taking my chances that she's a prisoner and not one of the gang members taking a nap, I rap on the window.  I'm rewarded by a small shriek and then an irritated roll of the eyes that is so reminiscent of Senator Burnhart that I burst out laughing.  Here's one item marked off my to-do list for the day. 


	23. Anticipation of Events Not Yet Passed

Hey Everybody!  Finals are officially driving me round the bend, but fortunately for y'all I'm having an attack of the procrastination bug and I also feel guilty for neglecting my poor story.  Rest assured that I've had far less interesting things to be writing lately.  I swear that once I go home for the holiday's the updates will be as sugar plum fairys dancing in your heads, that is to say frequent and trippy.  Also, look for Max and Alec to be reunited within the next chapter or so but expect as always something to go angstly awry.  Also, **this is for MM and Glitterina and anyone else who won my guessing game at the beginning of the story, as both of you have also had input guessing about certain other things you guys get to choose boy or girl for the big event.  If it's a tied request then I'll have to look to our panel of readers.  Enjoy!**

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The first green fingers of Cano Pelour come into my view through the window of the helicopter just before dawn breaks across the sky. Somehow, given its history, it looks like such a peaceful place. 

"Earth to Max, we're almost there oh divine supreme leader."  Naia snorts at Mole. 

"Welcome to hell. He named it you know? The madman that leads these murderers. He was a revolutionary from the time he was a young boy, he was only fourteen when he aided the leftist forces in toppling the Vargas regime. When the Brazilian army toppled the new regime ten years later with the help of our government, retributions were taken by the new military government against the rebels. He was only twenty three, he and four other rebels including his fiancee had fled Rio de Janiero and were hiding out in Salvador in the oldest portion of the city called Pelour-inho. They had taken refuge in the church of the White Lady, Igreja da Senhora Cano, when the army finally caught up with them. The Manticore files were very descriptive. It was written that the inside of the church was all white marble and by the time that they were done it was drenched in red. The sergeant in charge of catching the rebels was something of a sick case himself and he had his men scrawl the word traitor into each of the rebel's chests before leaving them to bleed to death. Unfortunately for us, Pardido survived."

   
The sun begins to rise and at that moment there is a sudden flash like a camera going off in front of my eyes and I can see it all in my head as though I were there. A very young Alec carrying the bodies of two girls, one over each shoulder, through the jungle. Naia and Biggs looking at the markings on the girl's chest while Aidan wretched in the background. The symbol on their chests is familiar for some reason, not in and of itself but as though I've seen a variation of it before. The light becomes brighter and things start flashing faster, a dark haired little girl with pale skin crying in the middle of a pile of rubble, Mole and Joshua running through a dark corridor yelling my name, a man dressed all in black slashing at me with a knife and cutting across my forearm as I danced out of his way. Light pores through my vision with unbearable intensity and the visions move faster, so quickly that I have trouble following them, Logan sitting beside a young woman in the office at the senator's mansion, an old woman laughing insanely in the middle of a city bazaar, Kate kneeling on the ground staring at me dazed, Alec shouting my name, Alec shouting my name and reaching for me. 

"Max!" The lights stop flashing and Kate's face appears inches from the end of my nose. Her eyebrows are raised in consternation and she is snapping her fingers at my left ear. "Are you alright honey? You just phased out there for a minute. Not any problems with the...?" 

"No." I reply a little too vehemently trying to prevent Kate from blurting out my secret in front of the entire command crew. Kate gives me a miffed snort and rocks back on her heels so that she is no longer in my face. 

"Dix was just trying to get your attention, if we get any closer to the island we run the risk of them being able to hear the chopper or pick it up on short range radar. We're gonna have to make the jump now." I give her a distinct look of annoyance before peering out the window again.  When Manticore went up in flames not everything was destroyed, and Mole had taken a team out to the compound to scavenge.  Now I'm riding in the surprise that he'd had for me and Alec, a fully functioning black hawk with night scopes.  Unfortunately we'd gotten a later start than we'd planned because the stupid thing had stalled out the first time we'd tried to lift off and a complete double check of the systems had been required.  

This next maneuver is going to be tricky.  Mole has to lower the copter enough so that we can drop Naia and Kate who will then deploy two rubber rafts and hold them steady as the rest of us drop.  I take a final look at the verdant blanket of the approaching island and wonder where he is in that mass of green.  

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_Four hours earlier…_

"Dr. Livingstone I presume?"  The girl rises from her cot with queenly self-possession and offers a slender and rather grimy hand to me.  Her accent throws me for a moment before I remember that she's been at boarding school in England since she was old enough to be sent away from home.  Giving a sketchy bow and a mock salute I take her mud grayed hand in mine and give it a courtly kiss.  All things considered I feel rather like I've just saved the princess in a fairytale.  Except that this little girl is not the princess that I want to be rescuing.  Then considering that my princess never really needs rescuing I'll have to make do with a kidnapped teenager.

"Ms. Elizabeth Burnhart I presume?  Your mom's been frantic for you."  She sniffs dismissively at me.  "She really has been worried about you.  My name is Alec and this is Erick, we'll be your chauffers today."  She drops into a little curtsy.

"Mr. Alec, Mr. Erick, I'm very pleased to meet you.  I've never met a real live transgenic before, it's quite an honor."  Her voice contains no hint of irony beneath the upper-crusty British accent so I take her statement at face value.  

"I've never met a person with an English accent before so I guess we're even.  Now what we need to do is find the other two hostages and then sneak back over to the south side of the compound so that we can wait for a ride out of here."  A look of surprise crosses her young face.

"I assumed that you would know.  I hope that your friends are bringing a big ride because we may have one or two more passengers."


	24. Herding Harker

I'm clutching his hand like a frightened maiden as we creep along the corridors.  Not that I'm actually frightened, but I'm not stupid either.  The transgenic boy that rescued me is dreamy and I'm pretty sure that when we get around to rescuing Harker the sight of him will snap her right out of her catatonia.  

The first two cubicles, I can't bring myself to call them cells, are empty, but the third one has a middle aged man lying on the cot inside.  My companions face screws up when he looks inside, as though he were confronting one of the less pleasant unfathomable forces of the universe.  He reaches out tentatively and taps a finger against the glass.  The man inside the room jumps off the bed with a little start, and smacks his head on the wall.  Alec chuckles silently to himself before reaching over and wrenching the door open.

"Alec what are you doing here?"  The man on the cot rubs his head and shoves a pair of glasses up on the bridge of his nose.  

"I'm taking a vacation for my health you twit, what do you think I'm doing?  Max sent me here to rescue your sorry ass."  This news makes the man on the cot sit up straighter and he looks for all the world like a preening bird for a moment.

"Max sent you to rescue me?"  Alec roles his eyes at the older man and smirks.

"Yeah she sent me to rescue you and Elizabeth and a few half dozen other people it seems.  She was very specific though that I rescue her dear old Friend Logan.  She said I wouldn't get any for a whole week if I didn't bring at least half of you people home."  The older man deflates like a punctured balloon and Alec walks over and hauls him off the bed by the arms.  "Elizabeth Burnhart, English Royale, meet Logan Cale, international superhero."  With that, Alec takes Logan by the shoulder and me by the hand and propels both of us down the hall.

Harker is sitting up against the wall in the next room in almost exactly the same position that I'd last seen her.  As I had predicted, the sight of Alec cheered her greatly and me and Logan were summarily allowed to walk under our own power so that Alec could carry the little faker who had suddenly developed the inability to walk under her own power.  

Alec halts suddenly so that I'm forced to stop on a dime and Logan rams into him almost propelling Harker out of his arms and onto the floor, only Erick's steadying arms stop her from getting a chinful of concrete.  I curse the Fate's which for some unaccountable reason seem to have taken favor on Harker.  Oh yeah, like she's a deserving person.  "Shhh, I hear voices up ahead."  Brazilian voices, this isn't a good sign.  I flatten myself against the wall and hold my breath, I'm not eager to continue my tenure here so getting caught isn't on the agenda.  We still haven't found the other prisoners, but I know that Alec works for my mother so I have to be his main priority.  "Three men coming up the stairs, you four stay here and stay quiet."  I wonder whether he'll opt for getting me to safety first and then returning for the others or whether he'll try to play the hero.  In a flash of denim and black leather Harker is tossed onto her feet and he's gone and mingled grunts, smacks, and groans come floating up the stairs.  Before I can blink again he's back by our sides and propelling us down the stairs, around the prone bodies of three bloodied gang members, and out to freedom.

We're close to an exit now, I can smell it in the sudden freshness of the air.  Wood smoke and hibiscus mingle on the warm currents on night air that waft through the narrow servants hall, but it seems to me that there is too much smoke for a few simple cooking fires. Alec tilts his head like a dog catching the scent of a rabbit and a small smile lifts the corners of his full mouth.  The sight is comforting, it means that our back up rescuers are probably here.  Holding hands like Dorothy, Scarecrow, and Tinman, the five of us edge down the hall towards the door, backs flattened against the wall.  Five yards, then four, now even I can smell the scent of burning huts and here the metallic banging of a fist fight in the courtyard.

They are lined up in military precision, standing on the grass and waiting for us.  Still looking frail and grandfatherly, the old man stands in front of them like a benevolent dictator and beams at us, the first rays of morning sun just touching the snowy white masses of his hair.  Two men standing off to one side hold trash can lids in their hands, and just behind them I can see the remains of a large bonfire.  I understand with a sinking nausea in my stomach that we've been smoked out of hiding like no more than cattle.

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Kate gently holds my hair back while I retch the last of my breakfast up in a convenient grove of palm fronds.  The raft ride to the island had not been kind on my stomach and my squad was lucky that I'd managed to hold it in until we'd landed on shore rather than spewing up all over them.  I can here the sounds of a verbal altercation in the meadow beside me, two voices that could only belong to Naia and Dix.

"I'm telling you it was here!"  Naia's voice is pitched high and on the defensive.

"Well gee dandy you idiot, I can tell that from the happy remains of building that we found scattered around in the forest , but that doesn't exactly help us find the yahoos we're supposed to be rescuing now does it."  Dix's voice grates like gravel against my sensitive nerves.  I feel the warm stickiness of a few salt tears trickling down my face before I double over and start to retch again.


	25. Running in the Rain

"You will not move.  You will not breathe.  And most especially, you will please to not try anything stupid and heroic.  You boy, yes the mutant, step into the very middle of the clearing.  I can't have you doing anything like a rescue attempt.  Miss Burnhart and Mr. Cale will step back into the doorway and accompany the nice armed gentlemen up the stairs and into the accommodation which I have kindly provided for them."

_Rain pelts my slick bare arms, plastering my overlong hair to the nape of my neck, and running in rivulets down my forehead._

I stare at the old man with growing antipathy, knowing that I need to act before Elizabeth and the moron are dragged back up to their cells.  Rescuing them twice is not in the books.  Thankfully I didn't come here totally unprepared.  The handy dandy tracking device that we'd borrowed from Lela wasn't the only trick I had up my sleeve, we'd also liberated from her personal stash a cute little ping pong ball size glob of glass.  In a movement so fast that no one but a fellow transgenic would see I palm the little globe and then fling it with my not inconsiderable strength into the center of the ring of bad guys.  

_Lightening strikes one of the frothing palms outside cracking a branch and sending it crashing to the sands of the shoal.  _

Have you ever seen the Wizard of Oz?  The Wicked Witch of the West disappears in puffs of green smoke.  Appropriately enough, the globe I stole from Lela does the same trick.  Time stands still for a few moments as the globe explodes and the smoke spreads out.  My transgenic sight is no help in the thick bank of colored fog but my hearing is capable of coordinating all of the sounds around me into a mental map of the compound.  Even kicking in immediately, my ears have no chance to pick up the first shot as I dash towards the door.  The fickle lady luck is with me for once and the shot lands just short of hitting my foot.  A spray of bullets lies between me and Elizabeth and Logan.  There's only one thing to do at this moment and the animal instinct of it bothers me.  Leaping straight up in the air I land in a crouch on a tree branch over my head and swing like Tarzan into the forest.

_I shudder involuntarily and duck back inside the rough hewed hut.  Brutal winds threaten to tear the flimsy roof off the small shack which has been my pitiful shelter for most of the night._

It all makes a terrible kind of sense.  The blond girl standing off to one side of the old man had looked familiar, she had in fact looked like a ghost.  Biggs, Adain, and Naia, 487 and 466.  The five members of the team that I brought with me to Cano Pelour the first time I'd come here.  I am sure with the certainty of a perfect memory that the blond girl is 487, but oddest of all she looks exactly the same as she did the last time I saw her.  Okay the second to last time I saw her maybe, before the death and mutilation.

_  The selfish half of my brain, the one which I'd allowed to govern me in those first few months after I'd been freed from Manticore, wished desperately that she was here with me right now.  I crave the comfort of her touch, it's been a long while since I have gone without it.  _

It all makes sense.  The symbol carved ritualistically on all of the victim's chests had looked so familiar and now I could smack myself for not thinking of it sooner.  It is a DNA double helix overlaid on the oroboros, the snake eating its own tail as a sign of eternal life.  The gang has been kidnapping not only the influential and wealthy, but also some ten years ago a group of precious genetically engineered children.  Elizabeth had mentioned to me seeing several people with lesions and birth defects, illnesses like the ones that affected lots of Manticore's finest in our earlier years before the gaps in our DNA were fixed.  

_On the other hand, the rational portion of my brain is happy that she's as far away as she can get from this godforsaken hell hole.  My enhanced vision catches a dimmer flash of light outside.  It can't be lightening again, it's too low to the ground and not nearly bright enough.  _

Kidnapping Elizabeth has always seemed like a pointless move to me.  There are plenty of rich brats out there whose parents don't actually care for them, no need to capture the one who was sure to have a cavalcade of revved up super fighters sent out to look for her.  No need to take her unless she wasn't the real target, no need to take her unless the real target is the said super fighters coming to her rescue.  Pardidos needs our DNA to perfect his own cloning process.  Every maneuver from the death of 487 and 466 to Elizabeth Burnhart's kidnapping has been strategically planned to steal Manticore's technology.

_A second flash cuts through the driving rain, the long focused beam of a high-powered flashlight._

Oh shit, now I'm not only running from Pardido's men, but a bunch of wannabe Manticore soldiers with every genetic advantage which might possibly save my skin.  And now it's starting to rain.

_It's over.  They've found me, and I know that despite the hurricane raging outside, I can't hide indefinitely.  Breathing deeply I plunge into the driving rains outside._


	26. A Reunited Front

_I fling myself out of the makeshift shelter and into the magnetized storm raging outside. The gutted palm trees offer little shelter as I dash between them, and the palm fronds which I'd ironically found pretty when I arrived on the island slash into my skin as I run leaving small welts and thin trails of blood on my arms and legs. A brilliant flash of lightning illumines the dark blue sky and I fling myself to the ground lest my pursuers catch sight of me. A small chunk of palm tree trunk disappears in front of me, splintered and eaten away, a small dart embedded in the bark. My last coherent thought as footsteps crash around me and I battle the encroaching darkness is that they must have some kind of air propellant to make the darts go so far._

Then she's on me, kissing my face and neck and hands, anywhere her lips can touch.  I can hear the sounds of the cavalry fighting off my attackers, and her delicate hands on my neck gently pulling out the embedded dart.  Her lips close over my neck and she begins dragging on the wound.  The urge to make some crack about hickies battles with the urge to sleep.  Then just as quickly as it started I can feel the heavy headedness retreating.  "Oh god I missed you so much.  We aren't ever splitting up ever again, the senator can shove it up her ass cause I don't care if the world is on fire.  I was so scared you asshole, you couldn't have called a little more often could you?  Do you have any idea how worried I was?"

If she's scolding me then she's okay now.  I can feel her pulse beating wildly beneath my hands which are currently trapped between our chests.  To stop her imprecations I free one of my hands and pull her head down to meet mine.  For once she does what I want, stopping her accusations with schizophrenic speed and fisting her hands with almost painful desperation through my soaking wet hair.  

"I love you Maxie."  She bursts spontaneously into tears which mix with the rain water and leak into my mouth with every kiss.  Carefully gripping both of her hands in mine I struggle into a sitting position and pull her onto my lap.  "What's wrong Max?  What happened?"  The star shine reflects in her eyes as she looks up at me.

"I have something to tell you Alec, something big."  I feel something burn in my chest at seeing her face like that, the light that glows up from within like a million candles, that light has been missing for a while now.  Can it possibly be that something good has happened to her for once?  I reach out tentatively and brush my thumb across her pretty wet red lips letting my hands skim over the surface of her skin to the nape of her neck.  Gently wrapping my hands around her neck I pull her in again for another kiss, her thrumming body warming my chilled and rain soaked one.  Before things get out of control a voice clears behind us.

"Okay you two love birds we got to move it, right this minute kind of move it.  Save the simpering looks for later and move your asses."  Her mood is so light that she just laughs at Mole and helps me too my feet.  I grab her hand as she begins to walk towards the reinforcements, and I can't help but be amazed by the sheer number of them.  It seems that everyone I know signed up for this little rescue mission.

I lean over to whisper in her ear.  "What's the big secret Maxie?"  She turns halfway towards me and gives me one of her thousand watt smiles and a childish giggle.

"It's just a little secret, but don't worry it'll get bigger."  I raise my eyebrows at her Lela-like crazy speech.  "I'll tell you later, this isn't the right time or place for this conversation."  This time she is the one to silence me with a kiss, just a small peck on the lips, and now she is all business again.  

"Okay, we're assuming that Alec knows the layout of this new place, and that they'll know that he knows.  We don't have too much of the element of surprise on our side here.  Also, according to Naia here these pea-shooter toting sweethearts are clones of 466 and 487.  That means that we're going up against an evenly matched opponent for once.  Judging by the size of the compound they can't have more than a dozen transgenic clones on hand, and those are probably all copies of 466 and 487 since those two were lost on this island.  Since we're pretty evenly matched in numbers we just have to watch out for the stupid, slow, everyday gun slinging criminal types and we should all be kosher.  Well actually since none of us were raised with religion, that means that none of us are likely to be Jewish and are therefore in fact not kosher at all."  We all glare in sharp annoyance at the lizard man.  "The point is that we're going in again at night fall, landing on the rooftop, repelling in, snatching the kid and the cyber geek and the shifty senator type if we can find him, then getting the hell out of dodge on the hellllicopter that I so brilliantly procured for us.  Questions, comments, I don't give a shit so save them til your dead."

"Leave it to the crack team to have it all figured out."  Max pokes me gently in the ribs in remonstrance.

"Obviously better than your usual plan of break in and kill them all honey."  What can I say?  The girl has a big mouth on her, and I wouldn't have it any other way.


	27. Smells Like Teen Napalm

Hi guys!  I want to thank everyone taking the time out to read this story and bearing with my plot whims.  This one is going to have a doozy of an angsty ending but never fear, I don't abandon l'amour.  I also want to thank Emerald, nat452, and Stacey for your reviews, and acb whose review almost made me cry (happy tears sniff sniff).  Hope you all enjoy.

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I like to watch him sleep.  He holds one hand protectively across my waist and the other one lays convulsively next to his chin making him look like a little boy.  The sounds of base filter in around us, Kate arguing with Mole, the hiss, chink, sploosh, and crack of someone using a coconut tree as target practice, people going about their daily lives as though nothing special is happening.  When your whole life is made up of spying, and killing its amazing what starts to seem normal and routine.

Alec mutters a little in his sleep and his arm tightens around my stomach.  It's still flat now and will be for a few months more.  I have to tell him soon, but I'm nervous.  Not that he's ever given me a reason to be afraid about it, but I know that before me he liked women du jour and booze, and he's only twenty-two.  Then again, he's a kind of orphan like me, like the rest of us, and the idea of a family of my own is scary and thrilling.  He's going to make a great dad, and maybe a husband.  A small giggle escapes my lips as I realize that only a year ago I hated the guts of the man that I am going to make a life with.  

"What are you laughing about my sleeping beauty?"  I roll onto my side so that I can face him, and bury my head against his chest.  I need to tell him now.

"That I wasn't the one sleeping, prince charming.  And that you wrinkle your forehead like a hedgehog when you sleep."  His laughter ruffles my hair softly, and he gently outlines the planes of my chin with small kisses.  I need to tell him now.

"I think they got our names confused in the beginning Maxie.  See, you have a wicked smart mouth, and I have other endowments which would be well described by the term max."  Okay, maybe not the right moment, but I should still tell him now, but now his hands are wandering delightfully over my neck and down across my breasts and stomach, and I really am having trouble saying anything at all.  Just tell him now.

"Max, Alec, get your asses over here, it's go time."  His hands freeze momentarily on my hips.

"If we're really, really quiet do you think they'll forget that we're over here and leave us alone?"  He speaks confidentially, sotto voice, but I know that he's joking.  The training and instinct to do his duty is too deeply ingrained.

"Stop boinking like rabbits and get your asses over here, this is your project, the rest of us are just along for the recreational fun of it all.  Oh dear hell I really do need to get myself a hobby.  Something that involves macramé."  I groan softly and role on top of Alec so that his body blocks out the late afternoon sun.

"We really have got some great friends you know that?  Get our asses in deep trouble and they all come running down here to dig us out."  He tilts my chin up so that he can look at my face, and I imagine that I have rarely seen him look so serious.  

"You really are a leader Maxie.  Not because you're famous, or an 09'er, but because you're something special.  People just want to listen to what you have to say, want to protect you.  Not that you need protection or anything, because you kick ass.  Just because you're this amazing force of nature that needs to be indestructible.  Just because we couldn't live without it.  Do you have any concept of how amazing you really are?"  

Tears run messily down my face, soaking his chest all over again.  He gently holds his finger over my lips before I can reply.  "Shhh, just accept the compliment my love, you deserve it.  Now lets go rescue us some hostages."

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The spice of night on the island fills my nostrils and the salt of the ocean at least a mile away makes my skin damp.  Our fingers just barely touch as we weave our way between coconut trees and palm fronds.  There is no need for us to speak and with the whole gang listening via earpieces neither of us really feels the urge to converse.  My backpack bangs painfully against my shoulder and I reach behind me to readjust it.  Transgenic strength or not the canisters are damn heavy.

A click sounds three times in my ear, then twice, and then three more times.  In perfect silence, Alec leans over and drops a small kiss on my cheek.  Only a small swish of air and a nearly inaudible crunch of boots on soil signal his movement from my position.  When I turn back around to smile at him he's already gone.

The unmarked canisters match the length of my forearm as I pull them out and pull the staying pins out.  I silently apologize to the trees and forest animals for what I'm about to do, but I know that we've taken all the possible safety precautions.

I start jogging forward to the edge of the clearing and casually fling the canister behind my back.  The explosion behind me is nothing compared to the deep rumbling of the earth beneath my feet, the rumble of a dozen other explosions bursting through the air.  Mole gives his first ever giggle on the earpiece and lets out a small whoop of joy.

"That's it kiddies, gotta love the smell of napalm in the evening."


	28. In a Blaze of Glory

Oh how evil the next three chapters are going to be, but never fear the final installment of the series is already in the works.  This chapter is going to read like a really chatty internal monologue but I think once you reach the end you'll understand the point of it.

Bon chance!

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_Live fast and leave a pretty body.  I want to go out in a blaze of glory.  But not today.  If I had to choose I'd say that today definitely isn't the best day for me to die.  But some choices are best left to the blue lady in the sky._

Automatically, I hold my breath while I walk through the smoke.  It's thick, pouring out of the tree lines and it chokes out the dimly fading light on the horizon and the melted glass surface of the deep blue sky.  I can't help but wonder if I'll see the light dawning on that horizon when the morning comes.  

Then again morbid thoughts seem to get me into trouble, best to keep it cheery then.  I find myself errantly wishing for my old leather jacket, the one I'd liberated from a really nice department store just after my Manticore escape.  Somehow I think I'd look much cooler striding through the smoking palm fronds if I weren't wearing a bodysuit.

Nope, still being a pessimist.  Although with the edges of the compound coming into view and the darkly silhouetted shapes of a hundred or so bad guys running in a panic through the smoke, pessimism seems like the easier option.  

Five hundred more yards and the battle will start.  I reach out with my enhanced senses and let out a little sigh of relief when I feel Max's presence far off too my right.  Somewhere to the left Naia has to be lurking, and I'm glad that she's covering my other flank because if anyone else has a reason to fight these guys to the death it's her.  This is a comfort to me, because my extensive training in combat is currently whispering in my ear that I'm an idiot and that this plan sucks.  Somehow circling the bad guys under fire cover and taking them out in a hail of bullets sounded better before I was facing it.

Scratch what I said about wanting my leather jacket.  First of all I'm getting caught on brambles left and right and I don't want my precious baby getting ripped up, somehow along the way it's become as dear to me as Max's motorcycle is to her.  Secondly, and more importantly I would really like a flak jacket right now, nice, solid, and able to stop speeding bullets in a single bound.  

I start humming Rachmaninoff under my breath, a sure sign of nervous tension because the piano melodies soothe me.  It occurs to me that I don't know what Max might hum under her breath when she gets nervous or worried, and I have the urge to run over just to ask her.  

I stop short of going to her though, it's foolish to move position and more fun to come up with my own answer.  I once played a concerto that represented the beheading of a lover and one of the pieces had symbolized the head bouncing off the chopping block and away down the stairs.  That seems like an appropriate theme for Maxie, impassioned and bloody and a little humorous.

Max has seemed different since she came to rescue me, quieter and softer, and yet more brightly burning somehow.  A strong surge of pressure that feels a bit like drowning washes over me and I realize just how head over heels in love with her I've become.  The thought isn't as frightening as it would have been once, when I feared making a connection with anyone or anything.

Now I have the urge to run over to Maxie just to tell her how much I love her, but that seems both more and less silly than asking her what her life's soundtrack is.  I can tell that we're getting very close to the courtyard now, and the sounds of people running and screaming comes through much louder.

It reminds me morbidly of all of the other times that I've heard running and screaming, caused running and screaming.  In this moment it occurs to me that I have no idea just how many people I've killed over the last twenty-two years.  Probably more than a dozen on each of the larger missions and that isn't counting the more rigorously planned assassinations.  I wonder why the kills don't make me feel guiltier, and how much the blue lady holds me responsible.

Really I ought to keep doing good deeds for another fifty or sixty years to make up for all of the bad things that Manticore asked me to do.  The thought of running around fighting the good fight with Maxie until we're wrinkly and gray doesn't seem like such a bad idea.  Although the color gray still gives me the chills, even after nearly a year of freedom.

Most of the shouting and running is silenced now, a lull as the bad guys gather themselves for the fight.  I wonder if we'll age normally, me and Maxie that is, because our stem cells ought to keep away all of the nasty outward signs of senescence.  Of course that's assuming that I live long enough to grow old, which in consideration of my lifestyle doesn't seem all that likely.

Now I can make out the individual shapes of people and I draw my glock from its snug back holster and release the safety.  The weight of it feels warm in my hands and comfortingly familiar.  Time to kill the bad guys and make the world safe for kittens and puppies again.

My first shot goes right to a man's head and I'm sure that he's dead even before he hits the ground.  Now isn't the time to stun or incapacitate, not when they can inconveniently wake up at any time and put a bullet in my back or the backs of my friends.

A second shot goes straight through a man's heart and I wonder how many seconds his heart will continue to beat before the electric spark that keeps him alive finally gives out.  It doesn't actually occur to me what an ironic thought that is, when a bullet come from the unguarded rear and plunges through my chest.  It doesn't occur to me to wonder where all the transgenics pouring out of the smoke behind us came from.  It doesn't occur to me to cry, or scream, to curse life or pray for forgiveness, as the world goes inky black.  It doesn't.


	29. Missing and Feared

They're pouring out of the smoke, blending in with the thick licks of flames.  I can hear the exclamations of confusion from my team in my earpiece.  Have to find Alec, but my feet won't move, the smoke is disorienting me.  "There's more than a hundred of them Max, we need to pull back."  Mole is shouting into the receiver and I wonder if he realizes how much the loudness hurts our ears.

"We can't pull back to the forest, we'd have to get around the flames and the bad guys.  We're better off fighting our way towards the middle of the compound through the ranks of normals, and holing up in the bunker."

"Naia's right, everyone make for the bunker."  Kate clicks the receiver closed again and the voices leave my head.  I can't see him anywhere but the battlefield is a sea of black clothing and smoke making it nearly impossible to distinguish shapes and faces.

"Alec!  Alec!"  In desperation I throw caution to the winds and scream out his name.  If that stupid idiot has gotten himself shot, slashed, concussed, or mangled again I don't know what I'll do to him.  He just needs to be more careful with himself.  

Someone whistles as they rush up on my right side three nearly supersonic notes pitched only for transgenic ears, a pre-set signal to prevent friendly fire.  A strong and slightly furry hand clamps down on my arm with more force than I'd imagined.  Joshua doesn't even stop his forward motion but simply drags me forward rather like a rag doll, or a chew toy.  

"Max be safe now, we all head for the building."  Big guy isn't even out of breath, I'm impressed.  I try frantically to dig my heels in so that I can slow our helter skelter progress a little bit.  At this rate the world is a blur and I'm desperate to catch site of Alec so I can make sure he heard the order to pull back.  

"Alec,"  the baby must be having a bad effect on my cardiovascular system because I'm gasping when I wouldn't ordinarily have to.  "Have you seen Alec anywhere?"  I tug on Josh's arm a little harder to get his attention.  

"Haven't seen medium fella anywhere, but Max needs to go now, keep baby safe."  Baby?  How the, what the… how does he know?  Before I can ponder out the bizarre mystery that is Joshua he lifts me up into his arms and makes the final dash through the door.  Just as we pass over the sill I hear something.  Time stills, the fighting hushes and I hear a scream, and I hear my name.  

And then we're up the stairs and the rest of the team is pressing in on us.  

"Where's Kate I got a good chunk taken out of my arm by one of those cheap knock-off transgenics."

"You ain't kidding one of those blond ones tried to shove her foot up my."

"But I managed to use his momentum ram him into a fence."

"Shit, who has the med kit around here Elise is bleeding out and I need to set up a transfusion."

"Has anyone seen Kate?"

"She was right behind me a minute ago, who blocked off the entrance?"

"I set up the blockade but I didn't see anyone else."

"We need to do a head count."  I use my leader voice, the one that carries over a crowd.  It's as though I flipped a switch on them all, they all snap to attention and drag themselves into a straight line, wounded and all.  

There are more synapses in the brain than molecules in the universe, and more than that in a transgenics brain.  Algebra at six, calculus at eight, enhanced vision and speed.  It takes me less than ten seconds to count all nineteen of the transgenics in front of me, X's and hybrids all in various states of hurt and disrepair.  Twenty two of us had flown to the island in two special ops helicopters.  Alec would make twenty-three.  Three of us are missing.  Three of us including Alec.

"Kate is missing, who has the next highest medic rating?"  My voice is almost steady but I can feel the slight tremor in my arms and legs.  I'm shaking.

"I'm sure they're fine."  Joshua breaks rank and reaches out softly to pat me on the arm.  I smile at him tremulously and manage to hold myself still.

"Lark is the assistant medic in Terminal City she can take care of everyone's hurts."  Mole is quieter than usual, his voice is oddly gruff.

I realize for the very first time what it must have felt like for them for all of those years at Manticore.  I hadn't much thought about it during the battle against the Familiars, my thoughts had been very much occupied elsewhere, but over the years I've looked out for myself.  I've avoided long term attachments because my life was too precarious to consider keeping friends.  This is what it feels like to go into battle with a unit, with a family.  

Almost guiltily it occurs to me that I don't know very much about the third missing member of the team.  When we get back to Terminal City I'm going to learn all of their names, make an effort to become a real leader.  Maybe Alec is right and I can do it.  As long as I get him back.

"Excuse me ma'am, but do we have a plan for getting out of this?"  The boy is our youngest volunteer on this mission and he still hasn't broken the military habit.  It reminds me of one of Alec's stories, a mission in Minsk, an abandoned warehouse that had turned into death trap, and a few pounds of C-4 explosives.  I smiled at the memory, it had been a bedtime story, the best kind.

"I think we can pull of one more miracle escape."

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The boy ducks through the lung searing smoke and pauses to hide behind a palmetto bush when another group of transgenics comes thundering past.  Staying close to the forest floor he slinks from leg to leg until he reaches the side of the petite blond girl whom is his target.  Her body is too limp though and he fears that life has already drained away with her blood.  

He gently brushes a lock of hair from her face and kisses her already cooling cheek.  A sound behind him sends a shock running through his body.  The site that greets him is miraculous, a gift from the high one.  Yes, a gift indeed.


	30. Dead

"I swear to god if you lay one finger on her or make one inappropriate comment while Alec is MIA and I'll shove your head so far up your cloaca you'll be able to give yourself a prostate exam."  The odd lizard man that came to rescue us doesn't seem to like my fellow prisoner very much at all.  He gives me a reassuring, uhm, smile though as I walk out of the room so maybe he isn't so mean.

We walk down three narrow halls into a large cafeteria room and I halt at the site that greets me.  I'm not so easily frightened but the idea of walking into a room filled with people that could snap my neck with two fingers is daunting to say the least.  I catch the eyes of a boy about my age and he flushes a deep shade of red and looks down at the floor, his body held at perfect military ease.

"Well that wasn't so hard a rescue job.  Anything else you want done fearless leader?"  The lizard man addresses a stunning young woman with deeply tanned skin and dark hair, this must be their leader, the one that works for my mother.  I imagine her together with Alec, they must look quite pretty together.

Harker chooses this moment to remind us of her presence with a small whimper.  I give her a deeply withering look and step towards the leader with my hand extended.  "Elizabeth Burnhart, I'm pleased to make your acquaintance Ms. Guevera."  She stares at my hand speechlessly for a moment before giving it a small squeeze.

"So you take after your mom huh?"  Did she ever show you how to wire C-4?"  My eyes light up like a Christmas tree, I love chemistry almost as much as computers.  The lizard man gives me a full out grin and the shy kid walks over and hands me a fistful of wires.

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"And so if you add a little tri-nitro glycerine to the mix you can triple your load."  The first daughter, as I've come to think of her, is sitting in the middle of the cafeteria floor surrounded by neatly packaged bombs talking animatedly to the only X-6 on the mission.  The boy, whose name Dix tells me is Jack, is staring at her with a dazed kind of wonderment that looks like it will clearly lead to infatuation.  

On the other side of the room Naia and another of the X-5's are staring at me darkly, shaking their heads.  They've been nominated to set the charges in the ventilation ducts and they don't look happy with their assignment.  

In the meantime everyone else is looking at me like I've gone around the bend just because I want them to climb out a window and climb down the building.  Some people just have no respect.  Obviously they don't remember the fabulous flaming chicken rescue me and Alec had performed for Joshua last year.  Sometimes you need a flashy distraction.

Blowing up half of the building should be plenty distracting, enough for all of us to escape.  Then half of us can get the hostages to safety and the other half can go beat the bushes for Alec, Kate, and that other girl.  Poor blond girl, no one hear even knows what her name is, or even if she got around to picking one instead of a number.  

My leg is twitching angrily, my foot jumping spasmodically against the floor.  This is taking too long and my nerves were shot to begin with.  The reedy first daughter looks up at me from the floor, her face flushed with animation from her conversation with Jack.  She holds up a compact little bundle of wires and putty and gives me a crooked half smile.

Naia retrieves them with a no nonsense grimace and she heads resolutely for the east side of the building.  "You guys ready to do this?"  They stare back at me silent as crickets, obviously not thrilled with my plan.  "We have three of our people lost out there, three of our own, I asked if you're all ready to do this."  Looking chastened they all jump to their feet and start filing ahead of me, out of the door.

Now comes the hard part, motivating all nineteen transgenics, an elderly pilot, and two teenaged girls to climb out of a window, possibly into a spray of bullets, and then cling spider-like to the wall while the other half of the building explodes.  

Joshua gives me a brave smile before becoming the first to take the plunge.  There isn't any sound of bullets zinging through the air so I take it as a positive sign and motion Dix to follow him.  The rest of the transgenics file out after them into the pre-dawn air.  Jack carefully assists a suddenly dainty Elizabeth to step up and over the sill, and a reluctant Mole manhandles a wistful looking Logan over the edge.  

Taking a deep breath I follow the troops out onto the ledge and wait impatiently for the explosion.  When the fire and debris do come shooting out at us we all execute a spectacular arial dive and a brief and awkward landing.  Awkward mostly because Josh and Mole really weren't jacked up with any of the cat DNA, and those of us who were felined out are doing our best to keep the four normals from becoming ground pancakes.

Unsorting the ungainly mess of tangled limbs and sending a small prayer skyward that the explosion drew everyone's attention to the other side of the building, we take off running for the forest's edge.  

We're halfway to freedom when I hear a scream from the front of the column.  "Max!"  My stomach plummets to my toes, for someone to risk exposure by screaming it must be really important.

My heart jumps a little as I see Kate kneeling on the ground, very much alive and alert, but the ground around her is thick with blood and the expression on her face makes my body go numb.

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AN:

Mwahahahahahahahaha!  I am evil incarnate oh yes I am.  Only one chapter left for this story and then on to the final installment, which will hopefully be much much shorter, but who am I kidding I like writing novel length fics.  Then?  I might go back to the end of the show and start something on cannon again.


	31. Under a Dark Blue Heaven

I can't wake up, but surely this isn't really happening.  Kate holds his wrist in one hand and she has the desperate look of a cornered animal in her eyes.  She doesn't want to say the words out loud to me.  Say it.  Say it.  

"Is he?"  I choke on the last syllable.

"Not yet, but you don't have long."  Her voice runs hoarse, the underlying implication is that this is my last opportunity for a goodbye.  Beneath his body the pool of blood has nearly stopped growing but I can tell just by looking that he's already lost practically every drop in him and that a transfusion would be useless right now.  The hole in his chest is large gauge and a straight shot through his heart.  Even if there were a transplant available there aren't any facilities or instruments available out here.  Knowing that it won't make any difference now I shift his body so that his head and shoulders rest against my stomach.

No one speaks, not even a whisper of noise dares show itself around us, even despite the raging fires all around us.  His hazel eyes blink open for a moment and focus blearily on my face.  "You gave us a scare, I thought that we'd lost you for a minute."  My voice sounds foreign to me, like another person in another place and time.  "I'm glad that you're okay though, I wanted to tell you earlier, but you're going to be a daddy."  

The focus is slowly slipping from his gaze and his breaths are coming slower and shallower like those of a child going to sleep.  "You should sleep now darling, I love you."

"Love you."

He doesn't speak again or open his eyes, only the slight rise and fall of his mangled chest betrays the smallest sign of movement.

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_I love that moment exactly before dawn when the whole world seems to quiver with its own light. When under a dark blue sky all of creation seems united in a breath just as sun breaks the horizon and inextricably starts time anew. It is exactly at this moment of the morning, just as the first rays of sunshine strike his face that his last breath shudders and mingles with the light.  The thin pulse beneath my fingers stops, and the weight of his body across my lap changes infinitesimally, becoming heavier.  We sit like that for the last age of the earth.  _

_The blades of the helicopter beat out a staccato rhythm.  Joshua holds me in his arms letting my head lay against the hot glass of the window.  I'm not crying.  Their voices are pressing in on the outside of my world.  I wish my world was dead.  They're saying that it's a tragedy and Kate is telling them all about the baby.  Thank god for that they say.  A reminder of him, for her to hold onto.  Something for her to live for.  They have it all wrong though.  Bad, wrong, don't want a reminder of him.  Want him gone from my head so that it will stop.  I want it to stop.  They think that the baby will stop me.  That it's a substitute, but it isn't.  Kate will make a better mother than I will.  Anyone would make a better mother.  As soon as our daughter is born, I'm leaving, going to join him._

**Fin**

**Coming Soon the Final Story of the Series: _Trouble in a Green _****_Paradise_****__**

Special Thanks to ACB, M/A Fan, and Glitterina for reviewing so much,

And also to Stacey, candybabble, dom-letty-fan, nat452, MirellaM, flash, panda007, ting, msredux, staytooned, Brynnmissy, RFC, the-true-cat, jennzabell, and Firehand.

I know this book ended darkly, but I promise that things will lighten up soon :0)


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